| Description |
The project is a case study of the phonological development of a posttracheostomy child. The child had a tracheostomy from the age of one month until he was three years old. The primary purpose of the research was to evaluate how failure to develop speech early due to an airway obstruction and a corrective tracheotomy in infancy impacted the mastery of sounds as the development of speech began. Areas that were discussed were consonant and word acquisition, as well as states of the glottis and velum in his sound production. Research was gathered in the form of recordings done in a casual setting at the child's house approximately every two to three months for the period of a year. There were eight recordings of approximately fifteen minutes in length. Each recording was orthographically transcribed in its entirety, and 90 words were transcribed phonetically. Except where noted otherwise, the analysis was based on these 90 words from each transcription. A variety of calculations were made of the child's average number of words per minute, as well as his consonant inventory and frequency of use of various consonants. From the analysis of the data, it was concluded that the child's speech development was affected by the tracheostomy in a variety of ways. Vowels were often murmured, creaky, or breathy, and long. Consonants were often sublaryngeal, and heavily aspirated. To accommodate his large vocabulary, the child used a glottal stop as a generic consonant until he learned to produce other consonants. Except for the late acquisition of velar consonants, the child's consonant acquisition was normal. In addition, patterns of assimilation and consonant cluster reduction were also normal. |
