Phonological Development in Bangla: A Normative Study

Abstract

This study investigates the various phonological processes operational in the speech of 90 native Bangla spoken children between the age of 3;0 - 3;11 years. The speech of all children was recorded during the administration of the developed word list and was transcribed for analysis. Equality of proportions was used to investigate the observed pattern of variation in speech.

Overall this study has established two aspects of speech development: age at which the error patterns were suppressed and the percentage of children exhibiting the obtained phonological processes. Processes like medial consonant deletion, unstressed syllable deletion, /l/ deletion, vowel unrounding, alveolar fronting, denasalization, stopping (except stopping of affricates and fricatives), palatalization and monothongization were eliminated by 3 years 5 months, while nasalization, backing of stops, initial consonant deletion, and coalescence were not found in age beyond 3 years and 9 months. Processes like vowel rising, nasalization, stopping, nasal assimilation, stop assimilation, velar fronting, and deaffrication decreased significantly as the chronological age progressed from 3 to 4 years. Other processes like cluster reduction, epenthesis, final consonant deletion, deaspiration, /r/ deletion, affrication (of fricatives), liquid replacement, and fronting of retroflex were considered to persist beyond 4 years of age. The results however refute the fact that, the mastery of phonological system is completed by 4 years of age. Native Bangla speaking children continues to use simplification for clusters, final consonants, fricatives, liquids, retroflex sounds, and the aspirated counterparts of stops, even after the age of four.

The results thus provide a profile of the underlying rules a typically developing child uses, which can be served as a basis for planning remediation. Also information about typical errors helps to delineate the normal course of acquisition; consequently, a child’s atypical phonologic development can be evaluated against normal or typical error patterns.