O uso de estratégias de reparo nos constituintes coda e onset complexo por crianças com aquisição fonológica normal e desviante

Abstract

To describe and to analyze the use of repair strategies in the syllable constituents of coda and complex onset used by children with normal phonological acquisition and phonological deviation, in order to examine the similarities as well as the differences between the studied groups. Besides this, specifically in relation to the coda constituent and based on the Non-Linear Gerative Phonology, we aimed at examining if the application of the adopted resources provides evidences of phonological knowledge. Methods: The analysis included speech data from 60 children with normal acquisition, 30 female and 30 male, in addition to 84 children with deviation, 31 female and 53 male. The age in the normal group was between 1:0 and 4:0, whereas in the deviation group it was between 3:0 and 11:0. In the analysis of the strategies used in complex onset position, the variables: age, gender, preceding and following context, obstruent of complex onset, kind of liquid of complex onset, tonicity, number of syllables and position in the word were considered. In relation to the resources used in the coda, the variables were: age, gender, preceding and following context, kind of phoneme in the coda, tonicity, number of syllables and position in the word. Then, the data were submitted to statistical analysis using the VARBRUL program. Results: The analysis of the complex onset showed that the strategies used by the children considering normal phonological development and deviation were, respectively: simplification for C1V (93%; 77%), alteration of the obstruent feature (5%; 17%), alteration of the liquid feature (1%; 5%), epenthesis (1%; 0%) and metathesis (0%; 1%). In the coda constituent, the children with normal development and deviation used the following resources, respectively: omission of target segment (71%; 71%), omission of target segment with a change in the quality of the preceding vowel (1%; 4%), omission of target syllable (6%; 1%), 14 semivocalization (11%; 14%), substitution for liquid (1%; 3%), palatalization (2%; 3%), metathesis (1%; 2%), epenthesis (1%; 1%), compensatory lengthening (5%; 0%) and other realizations (1%; 1%). In terms of the strategies used in the complex onset, the variables tonicity, preceding context and position in the word were not relevant, whereas considering the resources applied in coda, all the variables were important. Conclusion: The study of repair strategies in both constituents showed more similarities than differences in relation to the kind of repair strategies that children with normal phonological development and phonological deviation use during the acquisition process. In the complex onset constituent, there is less diversity among the resources, while the use of simplification for C1V is predominant in both studied groups. In the coda syllabic position, we found a greater variety of strategies, and the omission of the target segment was the most used by children with normal phonological acquisition and deviation. Besides this, the other strategies applied in the coda position became important due to their evidences in terms of phonological knowledge.