Consonants lost: a Swedish girl with protracted phonological development

Abstract

This paper addresses the phonology of a Swedish girl, aged 3 years 10 months, with extensive phonological difficulties that include an unusual phonological pattern. She had relatively well-developed phonological building blocks in terms of features, stress pattern and word length (number of syllables), but had extensive difficulties regarding syllable and word shapes, with frequent deletions of both segments and whole syllables. Word-initial position was dominated by non-continuant consonants, both voiced and voiceless, with extensive deletion. Word-medial position was dominated by voiceless obstruents, with extensive use of [j] in place of voiced consonants. Word-final position was similar to word-medial, but with more deletion than [j]. Non-initial stressed syllables resemble word-initial syllables. Consonant clusters mirrored singletons, i.e. with similar substitution patterns or deletions. We present a non-linear analysis of her speech production, and a plan for intervention targeting her special difficulties.