title: Cross-linguistic comparison of speech errors produced by English- and French-speaking preschool-age children with developmental phonological disorders.
abstract: Twenty-four French-speaking children with developmental phonological disorders (DPD) were matched on percentage of consonants correct (PCC)-conversation, age, and receptive vocabulary measures to English-speaking children with DPD in order to describe how speech errors are manifested differently in these two languages. The participants' productions of consonants on a single-word test of articulation were compared in terms of feature-match ratios for the production of target consonants, and type of errors produced. Results revealed that the French-speaking children had significantly lower match ratios for the major sound class features [+ consonantal] and [+ sonorant]. The French-speaking children also obtained significantly lower match ratios for [+ voice]. The most frequent type of errors produced by the French-speaking children was syllable structure errors, followed by segment errors, and a few distortion errors. On the other hand, the English-speaking children made more segment than syllable structure and distortion errors. The results of the study highlight the need to use test instruments with French-speaking children that reflect the phonological characteristics of French at multiple levels of the phonological hierarchy.
authors.affiliation: McGill University , Montreal, QC , Canada.
authors.forename: Françoise
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Brosseau-Lapré
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rvachew
mesh_terms: D001184:Articulation Disorders; D002170:Canada; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D013068:Speech Production Measurement