If there is a vocalic R in your word list and you are working with a child with a severe speech disorder, discard that word for now. There are also R-colored vowels or vocalic R sounds (like in the words car, fur, and air), but we will save discussing those for another time. You can break down the sounds in the words into consonants (C) and vowels (V). One-syllable words can have a variety of syllable shapes. A one-syllable word with 6 sounds has motor-planning requirements that are significantly more demanding than a one-syllable word comprised of only one or two sounds. One-syllable words are not all created equal. "Springs" is a one-syllable word comprised of six sounds (five consonants and one vowel) - /s/, /p/, /r/, /I/, /ng/, /z/. "A" is a one-syllable word comprised of just one vowel sound - /eI/. One-syllable words are words that contain only one vowel. Why? Not all one syllable words are the same. Once taught a /p/, children with a motor-planning component to their speech disorder can say the /p/ in some one-syllable words, but not others. Controlling syllable shape is one way to create an appropriate list of target words for children with CAS and other children with a motor-planning component to their speech problem.Ĭhildren who have no motor-planning problems can learn a new sound like /p/, practice it at the beginning and ends of words, practice it in phrases and sentences, and then use it in conversation. As a therapist, you always want to find that balance between stimuli that are demanding enough to teach new skills, but not so demanding that the circuit breaker trips and the student only experiences repeated failure. A new sound or sound combination takes more effort (putting more demand on the system) than one that has been practiced many times. Consonants put more stress on the system than vowels. Words with many sounds are more demanding than words with fewer sounds. If the demands are high, the circuit breaker is overloaded and word production fails. If the demands on the circuit are low, the breaker does not trip and the word is produced correctly. Pretend that children with motor-planning problems have a circuit breaker somewhere in their system between their brain and their mouth. ![]() For most people, this process is automatic and effortless, but for children with CAS, each sequence must be taught and then practiced over and over again until it becomes automatic. Why does syllable shape matter when choosing words for speech therapy?Ĭhildhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a neurological speech disorder that disrupts the sequencing, transmission, and execution of the motor-planning commands of speech. This may be the functional explanation behing the preference for rightward parsing of C into a tigher relation with the following V.Learn why it is necessary to control syllable shape in your target words and how. The final consideration would be, what is it about C+V that encourages the idea that there is some tighter grouping? I think it is a phonetic fact, not a phonological fact, that tightening the timing between C and following V results in an easier-to-parse distinction between C and V, especially in the form of a loud consonant release. Fifthly, kind of drawing on all of these points, the positive evidence that C in VCV is an onset in other languages is weak, but the evidence that it is a coda is also weak, perhaps weaker. Given VCV, there has been a purely theoretical assumption that C has to be in some syllable, so naturally and Jakobsonianly we assume the C is an onset (not a coda, not unsyllabified).Ī fourth reason is that the argument in Arrente is fairly theory-specific and might be overturned with a different set of assumptions. A third reason, connected to the second, is that it is widely assumed that all segments are parsed into syllables, but there has never been a particularly compelling reason for that claim (and is not universal, see Bagemihl's analysis of Bella Coola). The immediately next reason, intimately tied to the first, is that by default it is assumed that all languages have CV syllables, and extraordinary proof is demanded of the existence of no-onset languages. If you had asked "Why have so few such persuasive arguments been made", I would point to the larger problem of making persuasive arguments in phonology (an analogous question is "why have so few languages been shown to have synchronic final voicing". The main reason is that the claim about Arrente is not self-evidently true, but that language has the distinction that a credible argument has been made.
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