Types of phonological processes occurring in normal Black English speakers

Abstract

Black English (BE) is a rule-governed linguistic system with its own phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. BE is a dialect, not a disordered variation of standard English (SE). When compared to SE, BE phonology has been described in terms of omissions, substitutions, and additions. This study looked at normal BE speakers in Portland, Oregon and described their dialectal differences The mean occurrences of the phonological processes used by the BE group were compared with those used by the SE group via two-tailed t-tests for independent means.The results showed that the normal BE subjects used 8 of the 36 phonological processes significantly more frequently than SE subjects, including consonant sequence reduction, postvocalic singleton deficiency, strident deficiency, velar obstruent deficiency, liquid /1/ deficiency, nasal deficiency, vowelization, labial assimilation, and place shifts. Although not significantly, some BE speakers used liquid /r/ deficiency, stopping, and palatalization while some SE speakers used prevocalic singleton deficiency and prevocalic voicing.Possible reasons that the results were somewhat different than expected are: 1) phonological processes may only occur in specific phonemic environments in BE; 2) phonological processes may more likely occur in connected speech; 3) most of the BE speakers may have code switched; 4) the BE subjects attended an integrated school and therefore more likely use some SE; 5) some phonological processes may not occur in Portland's BE dialect.The CAPP (Hodson, 1985) did not identify any of the BE speakers in this study as having a phonological disorder. Even though they used eight phonological processes more frequently than SE speakers, these processes were not used frequently enough to be targeted 3 for phonological intervention. This would indicate that the APP-R is an appropriate assessment to use with older BE speaking children in Portland, Oregon because with this test their dialectal differences are not frequent enough to warrant the label of disordered or delayep.