Abstract:

This paper reports on a longitudinal analysis of the acoustic properties of speech samples of a child, age 5 years and 7 months, with disordered phonology. The child, who produced [s] for both alveolar and postalveolar fricatives, was enrolled in a remediation program that focused on the correct production of the voiceless postalveolar fricative [(sh)] ``esh.'' Training involved imitation of [(sh)] in isolation and spontaneous production of [s] and [(sh)] in minimally paired words. Acoustic measurements were taken prior to treatment, immediately following the 2-week treatment program, and again 2 months following termination of treatment. Temporal and spectral measurements were conducted. Results indicated no significant differences between [s] produced for the target alveolar fricative /s/ vs [s] produced for the target postalveolar fricative /(sh)/ prior to treatment. Following treatment, the child produced the anterior--nonanterior distinction among coronal fricatives. Acoustic measurements showed that she did not simply add a postalveolar fricative to her repertoire of speech sounds but also changed her productions of target-appropriate /s/. [Work supported in part by NIH-DC 00260.]