Introduction

The following exercise is a case study of a 7-year-old girl (‘D’) with phonological disorder who was studied by Yavaş and Hernandorena (Reference Yavaş and Hernandorena1991). D is a monolingual, Portuguese-speaking child who comes from the city of Pelotas in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The case study is presented in five sections: primer on phonological disorder in languages other than English; client history; speech evaluation; focus on systematic sound preference; and assessment issues.

Primer on phonological disorder in languages other than English

The majority of research which has been conducted into phonological disorder has been based on English-speaking children. It is important, however, to consider if features of phonological disorder in English are also found in children who speak other languages. This has implications not only for theories of language acquisition, but also for the assessment and treatment of children with phonological disorders. Recently, investigators have begun to examine phonological disorder in a range of European and non-European languages including Spanish (Goldstein et al., Reference Goldstein, Fabiano and Iglesias2004), French (Brosseau-Lapré and Rvachew, Reference Brosseau-Lapré and Rvachew2014), German (Fox and Dodd, Reference Fox and Dodd2001), Putonghua (Modern Standard Chinese) (Hua and Dodd, Reference Hua and Dodd2000), Arabic (Bader, Reference Bader2009), Hebrew (Ben-David et al., Reference Ben-David, Ezrati and Stulman2010) and Turkish (Topbaş, Reference Topbaş2006). Some of these investigations have revealed that features of phonological disorder in English are also found in other languages. For example, Hua and Dodd (Reference Hua and Dodd2000) examined the phonological systems of 33 Putonghua-speaking children with speech disorder. These children displayed the characteristics of phonologically disordered children who speak other languages, such as persisting delayed processes, unusual error patterns, variability, restricted phonetic or phonemic inventory, and systematic sound or syllable preference.

Other investigations have highlighted language-specific features of phonological disorder. Brosseau-Lapré and Rvachew (Reference Brosseau-Lapré and Rvachew2014) calculated feature-match ratios for the production of target consonants in English- and French-speaking children with phonological disorder. They found that French-speaking children had significantly lower match ratios for the sound class features [+ consonantal], [+ sonorant] and [+ voice]. French-speaking children produced more syllable structure errors, followed by segment errors and a few distortion errors, while English-speaking children made more segment than syllable structure and distortion errors. Brosseau-Lapré and Rvachew concluded that the results ‘highlight the need to use test instruments with French-speaking children that reflect the phonological characteristics of French at multiple levels of the phonological hierarchy’ (98). Topbaş (Reference Topbaş2006) examined the phonological systems of 70 phonologically disordered, Turkish-speaking children aged 4;0 to 8;0 years. They found that while the stopping of affricates is a common developmental pattern in English, the stopping of fricatives, especially /s/ and /z/, was the more common developmental pattern in Turkish. This reflects the fact that affricates are acquired earlier than fricatives in Turkish. Topbaş stated that ‘it can be inferred that the most frequent error patterns are dependent on the phonological structure of the language. Although universal tendencies exist, the ambient language effect is apparent in all languages’ (520).

Client history

D is a 7-year-old, Portuguese-speaking, Brazilian girl. She is monolingual. Her physical development was normal. She has a normally functioning oral mechanism and normal hearing. There is no evidence of neurological problems relevant to speech production. D is a very extroverted and cooperative child.

Speech evaluation

D's speech was extensively evaluated. She produced spontaneous descriptions of thematic pictures. From these descriptions, a sample of 210 words was obtained for analysis. This sample did not contain imitated responses. Some of D's single-word productions are shown below along with their phonemic norms.

Focus on systematic sound preference

A different interpretation of the substitutions examined in the above data is that D is making use of a systematic sound preference. Clinical phonologists have long considered systematic sound preference to be evidence of disordered phonology (e.g. Grunwell, Reference Grunwell1985). Yavaş and Hernandorena (Reference Yavaş and Hernandorena1991) stated that ‘[a] case of systematic sound preference is in evidence when a group of sounds with the same manner of articulation is represented by one or two sounds in the production of the child’ (79). Fricatives are the focus of D's systematic sound preference. In percentage terms, D replaced 89.3% of fricatives with [t] and [d]. She replaced the remaining 10.7% of fricatives, all /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ targets, with the affricates [ʧ, ʤ], respectively. This level of fricative substitution, Yavaş and Hernandorena argue, well exceeds the minimum proposed by Weiner (Reference Weiner1981) of 70% occurrence of all the possibilities where one or two sounds could replace a class of sounds. D's substitutions thus qualify as a systematic sound preference.

Assessment issues

D's systematic sound preference was apparent because Yavaş and Hernandorena undertook a detailed phonological analysis of her speech. In English, such an analysis is generally performed through the use of standardised phonological assessments such as the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP; Dodd et al., Reference Dodd, Hua, Crosbie, Holm and Ozanne2006) and the Hodson Assessment of Phonological Patterns – 3rd edn (HAPP-3; Hodson, Reference Hodson2004). These assessments permit speech-language pathologists to examine target sounds in all word positions and to compare the performance of a child to his or her peers. Their reliability and validity make them the mainstay of phonological assessment. Their ease of clinical administration has also guaranteed these assessments a place in the SLP's toolkit – the DEAP, for example, is individually administered and involves a 5-minute Diagnostic Screen and up to four specific assessments. The results of these assessments can be used to plan phonological intervention in child clients. For example, the HAPP-3 manual includes a chapter about phonological intervention principles and procedures. These standardised phonological assessments may be supplemented by informal techniques, such as the recording and transcription of spontaneous speech during conversation or narrative production tasks.

The ready availability of phonological assessments in English is very far removed from the situation found in other languages. In languages other than English there is a dearth of such assessments. One reason for this lack of assessment development is the limited availability of phonological norms in other languages. Da Silva et al. (Reference Da Silva, Ferrante, Van Borsel and de Britto Pereira2012) state that ‘[f]or many languages there is still a lack of norms and adequate assessments to assess phonological development in children suspected of having a disorder’ (249). This situation has adverse implications not only for the phonological assessment of monolingual speakers of other languages with phonological disorder, but also for the assessment of bilingual and multilingual speakers with speech sound disorder. In a survey of 333 speech-language pathologists who worked with children with speech sound disorder, Skahan et al. (Reference Skahan, Watson and Lof2007) reported that most respondents used English-only standardised tests when evaluating non-native English speakers. In a survey of 231 Australian speech-language pathologists, McLeod and Baker (Reference McLeod and Baker2014) found that when assessing multilingual children with speech sound disorder, informal assessment procedures and English-only tests were commonly used, with SLPs relying on family members or interpreters to assist. Normative data on the phonologies of languages other than English, including Swahili (Gangji et al., Reference Gangji, Pascoe and Smouse2015) and Brazilian Portuguese (da Silva et al., Reference Da Silva, Ferrante, Van Borsel and de Britto Pereira2012), are beginning to emerge. The result has been the recent standardisation of tests for the assessment of phonology in a number of languages (e.g. Lousada et al. (Reference Lousada, Mendes, Valente and Hall2012) for European Portuguese).