Automating the analysis of child phonology

Ingram (1981, in press) introduced a set of procedures for phonological analysis of fundamental importance to research on phonological development and the clinical assessment of phonological disorders. Recent studies employing these procedures demonstrate their utility in research on the course of normal development in English (Ingram, 1981), phonological disorders (Ingram, 1986; Pye, Wilcox and Siren, in press) and cross-linguistic comparisons of phonological development (Ingram, 1981/2, 1983; Pye, Ingram and List, 1987) Despite such theoretical and practical successes, the procedures remain relatively unutilized in clinical practice. This is primarily due to the exhaustive analysis of language samples that the procedures demand. Most of the procedures can be automated, however, which should provide a greater incentive for their use in clinical settings. This report provides an overview of the analytic procedures and demonstrates how the procedures are performed in the PAL implementation. It also addresses the programming decisions which are an integral part of the implementation and which give the programme its flexibility and power.