• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.95-102
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of the phonological discrimination ability and phonological working memory of 10 typically developing children aged 4, and 10 other children with Specific Language Impairments whose language age is similar. In orders to compare their phonological discrimination ability among phonological awareness, discrimination tasks were conducted at the syllable and phoneme levels. Also, in order to compare their phonological working memory, the subjects repeated nonsense syllables. The research results may be summarized as follows: First, the children with Specific Language Impairments demonstrated a lower performance than the typically developing children in phonological discrimination ability at both syllable and phoneme levels, and the difference between the groups was statistically significant. Second, the children with Specific Language Impairments exhibited a lower phonological working memory performance in all syllables compared with normal children. Although there was no significant difference in 2 and 3 syllables, a significant difference appeared as the length of the syllables became longer from 4 to 6 syllables. It is deemed necessary to conduct research into qualitative and quantitative differences through an formal assessment of the phonological awareness and phonological working memory of children with Specific Language Impairments.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.229-241
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• 2001

Using eighteen texts from various genera of present-day Japanese, I collected phonologically reduced forms frequently observed in conversational Japanese, and classified them in search of a unified. explanation of phonological phenomena. I found 7,516 cases of reduced forms which I divided into 43 categories according to the types of phonological changes they have undergone. The general tendencies are that deletion and fusion of a phoneme or an entire syllable takes place frequently, resulting in the decrease in the number of syllables. From a morphosyntactic point of view, phonological reduction often occurs at the NP and VP morpheme boundaries. The following findings are drawn from phonetical observations of reduction. (1) Vowels are more easily deleted than consonants. (2) Bilabials ([m], [b], and [w]) are the most likely candidates for deletion. (3) In a concatenation of vowels, closed vowels are absorbed into open vowels, or two adjacent vowels come to create another vowel, in which case reconstruction of the original sequence is not always predictable. (4) Alveolars are palatalized under the influence of front vowels. (5) Regressive assimilation takes place in a syllable starting with [r], changing the entire syllable into a phonological choked sound or a syllabic nasal, depending on the voicing of the following phoneme.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.155-167
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• 2006

Hearing impairment children possess poor underlying perceptual knowledge of the sound system and show delayed development of segmental organization of that system. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between phonological awareness ability and word identification ability in hearing impaired children. 14 children with moderately severe hearing loss participated in this study. All tasks were individually administered. Phonological awareness tests consisted of syllable blending, syllable segmentation, syllable deletion, body-coda discrimination, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation and phoneme deletion. Close-set Monosyllabic Words(12 items) and lists 1 and 2 of open-set Monosyllabic Words in EARS-K were examined for word identification. Results of this study were as follows: First, from the phonological awareness task, the close-set word identification showed a high positive correlation with the coda discrimination, phoneme blending and phoneme deletion. The open-set word identification showed a high positive correlation with phoneme blending, phoneme deletion and phoneme segmentation. Second, from the level of phonological awareness, the close-set word identification showed a high positive correlation with the level of body-coda awareness and phoneme awareness while the open-set word identification showed a high positive correlation only with the level of phoneme awareness.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.27-40
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• 2022

This study identifies distinguishing features and variability of intonation patterns in Korean phonological phrases. Syllable count and segmental content, which are phonological conditions, of the intonation of phonological phrases were examined. Based on the four syllables, the intonation of a phonological phrase can be set to LHLH as the basic form, and syllable count acts as a condition for making a variation. The "3 syllables or less condition" changes the intonation from a curved line to a straight line. Variation occurs in pitch bandwidth and fluctuation according to segmental content. The first segment affects the phonological phrase formation bandwidth, and the following segment affects the pitch fluctuation. If the first segment has [+aspirate], [+tense], [+continuant], the intonation is formed in the high band, otherwise, it is formed in the low band. If the second or after segment in the intonation realized in the high band has [-aspirate], [-tense], [-continuant], the pitch is lowered to the lowest level of the low bandwidth. In the intonation realized in the low band, [+aspirate], [+tense], [+continuant] is blocked by the second descent of LHLH.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.73-95
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• 2007

Causal relationships of kindergarteners' phonological awareness and processing to their ability to read words was investigated with the participation of 289 4- to 6-year-old children attending three kindergartens in Busan. Results showed gradual growth in reading ability with age. Children performed best in reading words and poorest in reading low frequency letters. They showed continuous development in skills of syllable deletion, phoneme substitution, phoneme insertion, phonological memory and naming. Discontinuous development was found in counting syllables. Longer syllables were difficult to count, and middle syllables of 3 syllable words were hard to delete. Children had poor perception of final consonants of Consonant-Vowel-Consonant syllables. Children's phonological awareness and processing were latent variables strongly related to ability to read words written in Hangul.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.73-85
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• 2016

Speech-print mapping awareness is defined as the awareness of the principles underpinning how speech sound is matched to print symbols. Chinese is unique in that it follows the one syllable one character mapping principle. The present study examined the predictive power of speech-print mapping awareness in young children's word reading. Seventy-four Hong Kong children from the first and second kindergarten years were tested with phonological awareness, visual skills, syllable-level mapping awareness, and Chinese reading ability at Time 1. Chinese reading abilities were tested again 1 year later. It was found that syllable-level mapping awareness predicted Chinese word reading abilities 12 months later. Further, it seemed that the link of syllable mapping to Chinese reading is particularly significant for beginning readers. The findings suggest that understanding the language-specific speech-print mapping principle is critical for reading acquisition at the early stage of reading development.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 2005

This study investigated the reading ability of Korean second-graders and the relationship between reading and phonological awareness and RAN (Rapid Automatized Naming) ability. A language-based reading assessment battery was used. Children at the end of the Korean second-grade were still at the developmental stage of decoding skill and seemed to be at Chall's stage 1. Findings indicated significant correlations between reading ability and phonological awareness and between reading ability and RAN ability. Therefore, the importance of phonological processing could be extended to syllable-based alphabetic languages.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.51-63
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• 2020

Phonological awareness is a metalinguistic awareness ability of phonology and is known to predict language skills, such as reading and vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between phonological awareness, phonological processing, and language skills in 4- to 6-years-old typically developing (TD) children and children with language delay (LD). A total of 32 children (TD=18, LD=15) participated in this study. They performed a phonological awareness task consisting of counting, deletion, and discrimination at syllable level. Nonword Repetition, Digit Backward, Receptive & Expressive Vocabulary Test, and Grammaticality Judgment Task were performed to analyze the correlation between phonological awareness, phonological processing, and language ability. A multiple stepwise regression analysis was performed to examine the phonological awareness subtasks that predict language ability. In the TD group, the syllable categorization task significantly predicted the receptive vocabulary and the performance of the Grammaticality Judgment Task. The LD group showed that the syllable counting task significantly predicted the receptive vocabulary, the expressive vocabulary, and the performance of the Grammaticality Judgment Task. The results showed that the phonological awareness performance was significantly different between the two groups. Further, correlation analysis and regression analysis showed different results for each group. The result of the phonological awareness performance predicted the language ability of each group significantly, suggesting the importance of the meta-linguistic awareness ability of phonology.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.121-130
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• 2014

This study investigates the acoustic property of aspiration realized in English voiceless stops of /Cr/ and /sCr/ clusters. VOT is measured from stops in these clusters produced by two groups; one from native speakers of English and the other from Korean native speakers. Aspiration of stops in different types of clusters is compared to various phonological factors such as location of stress, syllable type, and position in word. Pursuing the idea that phonetic realization is correlated with phonological representation, attempts are made to account for the gradient nature of aspiration of stops on the basis of syllable structure at the phonetic level, which may vary in the wake of resyllabification. Voiceless stops in /Cr/ and /sCr/ clusters are further compared to results obtained in the previous study on /sC/ cluster. Variations in aspiration are also characterized in terms of segmental precedence relation of stops in the clusters, namely, post-[s], pre-[r], or both.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.79-94
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to compare phonological awareness ability of students with Down Syndrome(DS) and typically developing children(TD). TD and DS were equal the reading abilities(reading recognition). The subject were 10 DS and 10 TD, and were examined by test of phonological awareness. The test of phonological awareness was composed according to phonological units(word, syllable, phoneme) and task types(deletion, discrimination, blending). The results obtained in this study were as follows: The total score of phonological awareness ability of DS were significantly lower than TD. And the score of phonological awareness ability according to phonological units and task types were significantly lower than TD. But both DS and TD performed better on phonological deletion and blending task than discrimination. TD and DS represented different correlation between task types and phonological units. This means that TD performed better on all types of tasks and phonological units than DS.