Vocalic lengthening and medial coda omission in phonological disorders

phonological disorders.

to verify the occurrence of vocalic lengthening, through acoustic analysis, in a group of 16 children (8 boys and 8 girls) with evolutive phonological disorders (EPD), who did not present in their speech /R/ and /S/ medial codas; to verify the occurrence percentage of lengthening and omission strategies in the two types of coda.

recordings of 16 children obtained through the presentation of a picture album representing the 18 pairs of words that contrast the syllabic structures (C)VC and CV. After transcribing the recordings, the pairs of words were submitted to acoustical analysis using PRAAT, version 4.4.16. Vowel duration was measured in both types of syllables. Statistical analysis was performed and the significance test (q-square) was applied considering p<0.05.

although lengthening was not perceptually detected, it occurred in 93.75% of the analyzed samples. The q-square test indicated that the occurrence of lengthening is highly significant. Regarding the /R/ coda, results indicated 95.52% of lengthenings and 4.48% of omissions. For the /S/ coda, results indicated 12.5% of lengthenings and 87.5% of omissions. No significant statistical difference was observed between genders.

acoustic analysis identified both vocalic lengthening and omission. Vocalic lengthening was more frequent in the /R/ coda; omission was more frequent in the /S/ coda. The child who presents lengthening seems to have the knowledge of the structure (C)VC and, therefore, is closer to the production of the target-phoneme.