Phonological Process in Toddlers'' Single-Word Production: an Explorative Study of Alveolar Sounds in English

The production of phonological patterns is a very complicated process especially when alveolar consonant sounds are pronounced in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The toddlers ageing 2-3 years as well as the language handicaps find it more complicated to cope with this sound process. The present study on toddlers aims at investigating the alveolar consonant sounds in keeping with single word production. The Iowa Test of Consonant Perception by Jason Geller was implemented to investigate sound productions in the perspective of Substitution Process proposed by Burnthal and Rankson (2004). Non-probabilistic Sample of twenty-five toddlers was given 125 words; a five-word set to every toddler to pronounce repeating at least five times at the top of his voice the articulators at length. Data was collected by means of informants' close observations. The comparison between the pronunciation of original words and that of produced words with their phonetic transcription provided evidence of the shift in alveolar sound patterns during the phonological process by the toddlers. The results implicated that the toddlers made good use of articulators with ease and without any special training. They simplified the complicated consonant sound patterns at their own convenience. The study will be equally beneficial for speech pathologists, linguistic scholars, and keen phonology learners.&nbsp