Phonological analysis of four Down's syndrome children

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Abstract
Several studies have reported that the articulatory abilities of Down's syndrome children are poor, but have provided little detail on the nature of the articulation problem. This paper presents a phonological analysis of the spontaneous speech of four Down's syndrome children, ages 3;10–6;3 including a) the phonetic inventory of each subject, b) a comparison of target consonant phonemes and the subjects' renditions of these phonemes, and c) a characterization of the subjects' errors in terms of phonological processes. The findings indicate that 1) although the subjects are capable of producing nearly all the consonant phonemes, correct production is often limited to a particular position within the word, 2) the phonological processes which account for the errors of the Down's syndrome subjects are similar to those reported for young normal children, and 3) the phonological abilities of the four subjects are comparable to, or better than, their general language ability as measured by MLU.

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