نشریه پژوهشهای زبانشناسی (Apr 2020)
Manner Harmony in Farsi-Speaking Children with Typical and Protracted Phonological Development
Abstract
Abstract So far, there has been a lack of research on the manner harmony process in children who learn Persian, both in children with typical phonological development and those with functional phonological disorder. Therefore, manner harmony in these groups of children is considered in the present study. To this aim, manner harmony patterns are examined in children with typical and protracted phonological development.Data collection is performed using a Picture-Naming task, which contains 132 pictures from different items designed to elicit the production of 132 different words. Examining the data indicated a large number of manner harmony errors by children with both typical and protracted phonological development. In the investigated error patterns, plosive harmony and nasal harmony were detected in both groups, while fricative harmony was observed in children with typical phonological development. Analyzing the results using “Articulatory ease” and “Perceptual cues” frameworks confirmed that articulatory limitations are the only stimulants that trigger manner harmony in children with protracted phonological development. On the other hand, perceptual factors in children with typical phonological development may also trigger the manner harmony when articulatory limitations are lessened or removed. The findings of this study also demonstrated some differences with similar studies on children with typical phonological development who speak other languages. Keywords: harmony, manner of articulation, typical phonological development, protracted phonological development, Persian language Introduction Harmony (or long-distance assimilation) is a phonological process in which articulatory characteristics of a segment in one part of the word can affect the articulation of non-adjacent segment(s) so that the target and trigger segments become more alike. In specific, there are two types of harmony, namely, vowel harmony and consonant harmony. Consonant harmony is observed frequently in children, while it is not common in adults. The only attested types of consonant harmony in adults are voice and sibilant harmony (Goad, 1997; Hansson, 2001, 2004; Rose and Walker 2004). There are three types of consonant harmony: place, manner, and vocal harmony. Each word may display multiple types of harmony. Place harmony can occur in different patterns in children’s speech. For instance, alveolar consonants might harmonize with labials, or velars might harmonize to alveolars and/or labials (Grunwell, 1982). Moreover, depending on the category of the consonants participating in harmony (e.g., plosive, fricative, or nasal harmony), there may be different types of manner harmony. In addition, consonant harmony can occur in two directions: progressive and regressive. If a segment is similar to its preceding segment, then the process is called progressive or perseverative harmony (e.g., ‘again’ might be rendered [ɡɛŋ]). However, if harmony causes a sound to become more like its following sound, the process is called regressive or anticipatory harmony (e.g., ‘dog’ might be rendered [ɡɒɡ]). According to Grunwell (1982), consonant harmony is usually suppressed in normal children around 3 years old. There are many studies on children acquiring languages other than Farsi that considered consonant harmony in their language from different aspects (e.g., Bat-El, 2009; Berg & Shade 2000; Dinnsen & Barlow, 1998; Dinnsen & O’Connor, 2001; Dinnsen et al., 1997; Dinnsen, 1998; Fikkert & Levelt, 2003; Fikkert, 2000; Gerlach, 2010;Kim, 2010; Kochetov & Radisic, 2009; McAllister Byun, & Inkelas., 2014; Lucienne, 2009; Pater & Werle, 2003; Rose, 2000; Rose & Dos Santos 2006; Smith, 1973; Stemberger & Bernhardt, 1997; Stemberger & Stoel–Gammon 1991; Stoel–Gammon and Stemberger, 1994; Vihman, 1978). However, manner is rarely discussed in these studies. Moreover, there are several studies on phonological processes in Farsi-speaking children (e.g., Imani & Alinezhad, 2014; Jalilevand et al., 2011; Mirmosayeb & Alborzi Waraki, 2011; Saleh et al., 2014; Shirazi et al., 2009; Fathi Herat et al., 2018; Ghansouli et al., 2016; Shooshtaryzadeh, 2016, 2017). However, none of them had considered the consonant harmony process in children. Nevertheless, the importance of phonological processes (including harmony) in language acquisition, along with the value of these types of knowledge in understanding the procedures of language development in typical and atypical children, necessitates studies of this type in different languages, including Farsi. Therefore, this study considers manner harmony in Farsi-speaking children with typical and atypical phonological development. In this study, it is assumed that manner harmony is different in typical and atypical phonological development. Materials and Methods In this study, five children (4;6-6) diagnosed with functional phonological disorder (PD) and five typically-developing children (2;6-4 years) participated. To identify the PD candidates, their medical profiles were checked, and their parents filled out the related questionnaires. In addition, they were examined by different specialists, and there were interviews with parents and teachers. All candidates came from middle-class families and were primarily monolingual (i.e., they spoke standard Farsi in Tehrani accent) at home and in schools. The children were tested using a linguistic task, namely the Naming Picture Task, which included pictures of 132 familiar objects to elicit the spontaneous production of 132 target words. To collect the data, children were given necessary instructions concerning the test in a simple language. Later, pictures were presented to each child separately, and they were asked to produce the name of the picture, and the productions were recorded. The data was recorded using a solid-state recorder (Samsung Voice Recorder YP-VP1). The entire recording was carried out in a quiet place. Then, the recorded data was carefully investigated by two linguists and was transcribed using the IPA. Conclusion This paper investigated the results of a study on manner harmony in children with typical phonological development and children with functional phonological disorder acquiring Farsi. The analysis of the manner harmony errors identified in this study was in line with the hypothesis of the study, indicating the existence of different manner harmony patterns in children with typical and atypical phonological development. Moreover, the examination of the results using “Articulatory ease” and “Perceptual cues” frameworks have led to this conclusion that in children with atypical phonological development, only articulatory limitations are responsible for triggering manner harmony. On the other hand, in children with typical phonological development, perceptual factors also trigger manner harmony when articulatory limitations are lessened or removed. The findings of this study have also shown differences with the findings of similar studies on children with typical phonological development who speak other languages.
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