scholarly journals Descriptive analysis of the development of the Arabic speech sounds among typically developing colloquial Egyptian Arabic-speaking children

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Ahmed Elrefaie ◽  
Mona Abd El-Fattah Hegazi ◽  
Marwa Mohammed El-Mahallawi ◽  
Mona Sameeh Khodeir

Abstract Background Literature only mentioned a few kinds of research that did study the development of the speech sounds of the Colloquial Egyptian Arabic dialect. Moreover, these studies focused on describing the phonological processes that children undergo in early childhood rather than describing the exact time of acquisition of these sounds. Besides, no study involved a statistically enough sample size of children across the different age ranges. Thus, this study aimed to explore the development of the Arabic phonemes among 360 typically developing Egyptian children who speak the CEA dialect, between the ages of 1.6 years and ≤ 7.4 years. Results The results of a 93-picture-naming test of children were analyzed. A phoneme is considered acquired when 90% of the children could properly utter the target phoneme in all word positions and mastered when 100% of children could correctly pronounce the target phoneme in all word positions. The results revealed that by the age of 1.6–2.0 years, the 6 long vowels of the CEA dialect, besides the /h/,/ʔ/, /b/, /w/, /j/, /m/, and /n/ were mastered. /t/ and /d/ sounds were mastered by the age of 2.6 years followed by /l/ sound by the age of 3.0 years. Then, /ħ/, /ʕ/ sounds were mastered followed by /k/, and /g/ at the age of 3.0 and 3.6 years, respectively. At the age of 5.0 years, /f/ sound was mastered, then /x / and /ʃ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 4.6 years, followed by /s/, /sˁ/, /tˁ/, /dˁ/. By the age of 5.6 and 6.0 years, /ɣ/, /r/, and /z/ were mastered. The /q/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ðˁ/ sounds were mastered by the age of 6.0–6.6 years. This study revealed that fricative sounds developed before the stop sounds and front stops before the back stops, and emphatic Arabic sounds were the last to develop at the school age (> 5 years). Conclusions This study presented a chart of the development of the Arabic phonemes of the CEA to be used as a guide to decide upon the correct trimming to start articulatory therapy for children with articulation and/or phonological disorders.

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. Goldstein ◽  
Aquiles Iglesias

This study examines the effect of dialect on phonological analyses in Spanish-speaking children. Phonological analyses were completed for fifty-four 3- and 4-year-old typically developing Spanish speakers and fifty-four 3-and 4-year-old Spanish speakers with phonological disorders. Analyses were made in reference to both the General Spanish dialect and the Puerto Rican dialect of Spanish to demonstrate the effect of dialect on the results. The results indicated that the number of consonant errors, percentage of consonants correct, number of errors within individual sound classes, and percentage of occurrence for phonological processes all differed based on the accounting of dialect features.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Abdou ◽  
Omayma Afsah ◽  
Hemmat Baz ◽  
Tamer Abou-Elsaad

Abstract Background Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in absence of neuromuscular deficits. It is important to differentiate between language disorders and CAS to avoid misdiagnosis. The objective of this study was to develop a test battery for CAS in order to identify its possible presence in Arabic-speaking children, thus allowing the planning of appropriate therapy programs. The constructed test battery for CAS was administered to 70 monolingual Arabic-speaking Egyptian children including 10 children with suspected CAS, 20 children with phonological disorders, and 40 typically developing children. Participants’ responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity and reliability, and to evaluate sensitivity and specificity of the test battery. Results Statistically significant differences were found between the three groups as regard all subtotal and total scores of CAS test battery with good validity and reliability of the test. Conclusions The constructed test battery for diagnosis of CAS is a reliable, valid, and sensitive tool that can be used to detect the presence of CAS in Arabic-speaking children and differentiate between it and phonological disorders.


2022 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwa Elsherbeny ◽  
Hemmat Baz ◽  
Omayma Afsah

Abstract Background Using different methodologies, several researchers have reported certain acoustical and physiological differences between fluent utterances of stutterers and normally fluent speakers. The aim of this study was to determine acoustic characteristics of voice and speech in Arabic-speaking stuttering children in comparison to normal children and correlate these characteristics with stuttering severity. A sample of 80 Arabic-speaking Egyptian children (including 40 typically developing children and 40 stuttering children) in the age range 5–8 years were subjected to acoustic analysis of voice and speech using the Praat software. Results The stuttering children showed significantly higher values of jitter and shimmer in prolonged /a/ vowel sample, as compared to the normal group. This may reflect the subtle differences in laryngeal functioning or in the complex interaction among the laryngeal, respiratory, and the vocal tract systems in stuttering children. Both jitter and shimmer of prolonged /a/ vowel demonstrated significant positive moderate correlation with stuttering severity as assessed by SSI3. F0 was significantly higher in females than in males, both in normal and stuttering children. Conclusions The present study revealed significant differences in the acoustic parameters of voice and speech between Arabic-speaking stuttering children and normal children. Some of these acoustic parameters were significantly correlated with stuttering severity. Acoustic analysis can be used as simple, quick, and cheap tool for assessment of stuttering in children and might be a valuable addition to the diagnostic set for assessment of stuttering severity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (11) ◽  
pp. 3700-3713
Author(s):  
Saleh Shaalan

Purpose This study examined the performance of Gulf Arabic–speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) on a Gulf Arabic nonword repetition (GA-NWR) test and compared it to their age- and language-matched groups. We also investigated the role of syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity in light of NWR theories. Method A new GA-NWR test was conducted with three groups of Gulf Arabic–speaking children: school-age children with DLD, language-matched controls (LCs), and age-matched controls (ACs). The test consisted of two- and three-syllable words that either had no clusters, medial clusters, final clusters, or medial + final clusters. Results The GA-NWR distinguished between the performance of children with DLD and the LC and AC groups. Results showed significant syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity effects. Differences between the DLD and typically developing groups were seen in two- and three-syllable nonwords; however, when compared on nonwords with no clusters, children with DLD were not significantly different from the LC group. Conclusions The GA-NWR test differentiated between children with DLD and their ACs and LCs. Findings, therefore, support its clinical utility in this variety of Arabic. Results showed that phonological processing factors, such as phonological complexity, may have stronger effects when compared to syllable length effects. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12996812


Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Leddy-Cecere

The Arabic dialectology literature repeatedly asserts the existence of a macro-level classificatory relationship binding the Arabic speech varieties of the combined Egypto-Sudanic area. This proposal, though oft-encountered, has not previously been formulated in reference to extensive linguistic criteria, but is instead framed primarily on the nonlinguistic premise of historical demographic and genealogical relationships joining the Arabic-speaking communities of the region. The present contribution provides a linguistically based evaluation of this proposed dialectal grouping, to assess whether the postulated dialectal unity is meaningfully borne out by available language data. Isoglosses from the domains of segmental phonology, phonological processes, pronominal morphology, verbal inflection, and syntax are analyzed across six dialects representing Arabic speech in the region. These are shown to offer minimal support for a unified Egypto-Sudanic dialect classification, but instead to indicate a significant north–south differentiation within the sample—a finding further qualified via application of the novel method of Historical Glottometry developed by François and Kalyan. The investigation concludes with reflection on the implications of these results on the understandings of the correspondence between linguistic and human genealogical relationships in the history of Arabic and in dialectological practice more broadly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Abdel-Fattah Hegazi ◽  
Aya Mohammed Saad ◽  
Mona Sameeh Khodeir

Abstract Background Lipreading is considered an important skill that varies considerably among normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) children. It is well known that normal-hearing children use audition as the primary sensory modality for speech perception, whereas HI children use lipreading cues as the primary sensory modality for speech perception. Moreover, speech perception is a multisensory process that involves attention to auditory signals as well as visual articulatory movements, and the integration of auditory and visual signals occurs naturally and automatically in normal individuals of all ages. Most researches proved that lipreading is a natural and important skill needed for language acquisition in HI children. Lipreading also helps HI children to perceive speech, acquire spoken language, and acquire phonology. In the Arabic language, tools are deficient for assessing the lipreading ability for HI children, so this study was conducted to develop a test suitable for assessing the lipreading ability of hearing-impaired children among Arabic-speaking countries. The constructed lipreading test was administered to 160 Arabic-speaking Egyptian children including 100 typically developing NH children and 60 HI children. Participants’ responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity and reliability and to compare the lipreading ability between the NH and HI children. Ranks of percentiles were established to provide an estimate of the lipreading ability in children. Results Statistically significant differences were found between the normal-hearing and HI children as regards all subtotal and total scores of the Arabic lipreading test, with good validity and reliability of the test. Conclusions The Arabic lipreading test is a valid and reliable test that can be applied to assess the lipreading ability among Arabic-speaking children with HI.


CoDAS ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haydée Fiszbein Wertzner ◽  
Danira Tavares Francisco ◽  
Luciana de Oliveira Pagan-Neves

PURPOSE: To describe the tongue shape for /s/ and /∫/ sounds in three different groups of children with and without speech sound disorder. METHODS: The six participants were divided into three groups: Group 1 - two typically developing children, Group 2 - two children with speech sound disorder presenting any other phonological processes but not the ones involving the production of the /∫/ and Group 3 - two children with speech sound disorder presenting any phonological processes associated to the presence of the phonological process of palatal fronting (these two children produced /∫/ as /s/) aged between 5 and 8 years old, all speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The data were the words /'∫avi/ (key) and /'sapu/ (frog). Tongue contour was individually traced for the five productions of each target word. RESULTS: The analysis of the tongue contour pointed to evidences that both /s/ and /∫/ were produced using distinct tongue contours for G1 and G2. The production of these two groups was more stable than G3. The tongue contour for /s/ and /∫/ from the children in G3 was similar, indicating that their production was undifferentiated. CONCLUSION: The use of the ultrasound applied to the speech analysis was effective to confirm the perceptual analysis of the sound made by the speech-language pathologist.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Meymouna Bourzeg

The current paper scrutinizes the phonological processes used by an autistic child, in Standard Arabic, via the use of a constraint-based framework of optimality theory. The data of the present study were collected through a picture-naming test. To ensure that the pictures are representative of all standard Arabic phonemes, the researcher designed a test containing 84 pictures representing three intra-word positions (initial, medial, and final). The results reveal that the autistic child grammar is characterized, mainly, with seven phonological processes: sibilant dentalization, de-emphasization, gliding, stopping, nasality spreading, final consonant deletion, and fronting. Autistic children's phonological system is stigmatized by unmarked forms. In terms of optimality theory, treating the phonological problems of autistic children requires demoting the highly ranked unmarked constraints and promoting the lowest-ranked faithfulness constraint.


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