Study of Phonological Processes of 2-3 Years Old Hindi Speaking Normal Children

Abstract

Phonological processes are regularly occurring deviation from standard adult speech patterns that may occur across a class of sounds, a syllable shape or syllable sequence. This study analyzes the types of phonological processes occurring in Hindi speaking normal children in the age range of 2 -3 years. The present study included a total of 28 normal subjects in the age range of 2-3 years which was further divided into two age groups i.e., 2.0-2.6 years (4 boys and JO girls) and 2.6-3.0 years ( 3 boys and 11 girls). A list of 70 simple Hindi words which commonly occur in the utterances of normal young children were selected for the study. The word list had 24 consonants ( k, kh, g, gh, ts, tsh, d5, d3'1 t, 8, d, d, n, p, f, b, bh, m, r, /, v, s,f, and h), six vowels including diphthongs (a, a:, /, u, e, and au) and five consonant clusters in initial ( sk, sn, pl, tr, and sw) and final positions (rf, rs, rt, ks, and tr) In both age groups processes like retroflex fronting, affrication, stopping etc occurred in more than 60% (most frequently occurring) of the subjects. Processes like final consonant deletion, epenthesis, nasal substitution etc were seen in 20-60% (frequently occurring) of the subjects studied. Few vowel processes occurred in less than 20% (occasionally occurring) of the subjects. The study also revealed that processes like backing, vocalization, assimilation, vowel lowering and initial vowel deletion were not present in the higher age group.