Phonological development of Finnish speaking children at 3;6 and associations to previous and simultaneous lexical ability. (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Aalto, Eija; Saaristo-Helin, Katri; Stolt, Suvi
• Is Part Of: Clinical linguistics & phonetics. Volume 34:Number 7(2020)
• Page Start: 617
• Page End: 633
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Phonological development -- lexical ability -- finnish; Language disorders -- Periodicals; Applied linguistics -- Periodicals; Phonetics -- Periodicals; 616.855
• DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2019.1681517
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0269-9206

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Previous studies of Finnish children's phonological development focus mainly on children under 2;0. Earlier findings have suggested that phonological and lexical development are strongly associated at an early age. However, less is known about the longitudinal association. This study describes the phonological skills of Finnish-speaking children at 3;6 and compares them with early lexicon size at 2;0 and lexical ability at 3;6 (N = 67). The children's phonological development was measured using The Finnish Phonology Test. Lexical development was evaluated using the Finnish, long-form version of the Communicative Development Inventory at 2;0 and the Boston naming test at 3;6 At 3;6, all children mastered the vowels and diphthongs fully, and most of the children also mastered the consonants, with the exception of the phonemes/d/and/r/. Phonotactic skills had also been acquired well at this group level, although the word-medial and, especially, word-initial consonant clusters were still challenging. The percentage of phonemes correct was 95. Both paradigmatic and phonotactic skills at 3;6 were significantly associated with lexicon size at 2;0. In addition phonotactic skills correlated with naming ability at 3;6. Lexical development at 2;0 explained 21% of the variance in the phonological development at 3;6, whereas, the explaining value of simultaneous lexical skill was limited (9%). Present findings propose that associations between lexical and phonological skills weaken as phonological skills become more honed.