Analysis procedures

Children’s production of speech-sounds was examined in word contexts (i.e.

phonological analysis) in terms of the accuracy of their production and the percentage of children in an age group who reached the targeted level of accuracy (as in Smit et al., 1990). The children’s emerging phonological inventories were documented while keeping track of their developmental patterns and individual differences. The frequency of occurrence and the production accuracy were calculated for all consonant singletons and

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consonant clusters in four possible word positions. The following procedures were carried out:

4.4.1. Word count and languages

All Arabic and English words were tagged in the transcript. All attempted targets were included in the analyses and the percentage of languages used was calculated accordingly. At this stage of analysis, words of both languages were included to determine percentages of languages that are used spontaneously by KA speaking children.

4.4.2. Frequency calculations (Target words)

The frequency of occurrence was calculated for consonants and syllable shapes of target words that were attempted by children’s spontaneous speech samples. Number of occurrences and frequency percentage were calculated for each consonant, consonant cluster and syllable shape (see examples below).

All consonants and clusters attempted by children were included at this stage of analysis. For each consonant, cluster, and syllable shape the percentage of occurrence was calculated using the following formula:

4.4.3. Production accuracy calculations

Consonants that were attempted at least once by five out of ten children within one age group are considered as acquired following three criteria:

- Mastery production: when a sound was produced accurately in at least 90%

of the targets attempted by more than five children in given age group;

- Acquisition production: when a sound was produced accurately in at least 75% of the targets attempted by more than five children in given age group;

- Customary production: when a sound was produced accurately in at least 50% of the targets attempted by more than five children in given age group;

N o.Occurrences

T otalOccurrences = OccurrenceF requency

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For each age-group, the Percentage Correct Consonant (PCC), was calculated using the following formula:

Calculations are based on total number of targets (frequency count) rather than total number of children within a group (cf. Amayreh & Dyson, 2000). Because children produced consonants in variable frequencies, and the actual frequency of consonant occurrence in Arabic is unknown, the number of attempted targets produced in by a group of children is assumed to represent the number

occurrences in which the consonant occur normally in children’s speech.

For instance, the production accuracy of the bilabial stop /b/ for the 3;4-3;7 age group, is calculated as per the following example:

Given that /b/ is produced 4,083 time by all children and was produced 3,838 times correctly by children in 3;4-3;7 group:

That is, children in the named group produced /b/ correctly at 94% of total number of times it was attempted.

Consonants that were attempted by less than five out of ten children in a group were excluded from the accuracy calculations. The criterion was set to ensure that each consonant has to be produced by at least 50% of children in a group of ten. This would allow for potential individual differences between children within the group. For example, if one child of the group produced a consonant X once, and it happened to be produced accurately; the PCC of consonant X would be 100%, which would result in false positive finding.

4.4.4. Error pattern calculations

Phonological error patterns are defined as consistent differences between child and adult realisations of the target words. They are a general tendency that affects a group of sounds. For each age group, the percentage of error pattern occurrence was calculated using the following formula:

N o.Correct

T otalOccurrences⇥ 100 = P ercentageCorrectConsonant(P CC)

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The number of error patterns that were produced by two different children in a group was divided by total number of target words attempted by the group and multiplied by hundred to get the percentage of error pattern occurrence.

For an error pattern to be included in this analysis, an error has to be exhibited by at least two out of ten children in an age group. This criterion was set to avoid the possibility of auditory misperception. For example, a child may learn a word that he or she misperceived and was stored in their lexicon in error, the child may not be aware of the production error and produces it as it is. However, it is less likely that two children within a group misperceive the same consonant, but are more likely to produce the same error if the consonant was less

phonetically salient or more complex; therefore, if two or more children produced the same error, the production error is more likely to be faithful to child’s lexical representation.

Error patterns were then categorized in three groups:

1. Age appropriate patterns: when an error pattern occurred in at least 10%

of the target words attempted by two or more children in given age group;

2. Occasional patterns: when an error pattern occurred in at least 5% of the target words attempted by two or more children in given age group;

3. Rare patterns: when an error pattern occurred in less than 5% of the target words attempted by two or more children in given age group.

In earlier studies of developmental error patterns, the error has to be exhibited in at least 2 different lexical items to eliminate misperception (McIntosh & Dodd, 2008; Dodd et al., 2003). For example, if the child misperceives the word X, and learns it’s incorrectly; the child is likely to produce the X word in error without knowing the correct form of this specific word. In the current study, because the data was produced spontaneously, the error had to be produced by two

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different children in a group where the two words are less likely to be identical.

For example, if two different children produced one error pattern (e.g., fronting of /k/), the first child produces the error in /’kam.bal/ ‘blanket’ ! [‘tam.bal]; while the second one produces it in /’ka.bat/ ‘cupboard’ ! [‘ta.bat]; thus, the same error is less likely to be produced in the same word.

4.4.5. Target word shape, length and stress pattern analysis

This part of data analysis differs from earlier sections; similar to consonant frequency analysis, it looks at words that are targeted in child speech rather than actual realisations of those words. This analysis was limited to target words for several reasons; first, Arabic language is rich with bound morphemes that are interwoven into word structure; and it is expected that children omit some morphological structures that add to the word shape complexity. Second, stress placement in KA is often influenced by sentence prosody in different Arabic dialects, including KA. Data in the current study was collected from children of KA speaking families with different dialectal variations. Because intra-dialectal variation of KA was never described in the current literature, all variants were treated homogenously in the current study. Possible variants were transcribed according to the parents’ realisation of the target word rather than the researcher’s realisation (who is a native KA speaker).

Analysis of target word comprise of the following:

a. The number of target words produced by each age group;

b. number of different target word shapes attempted by each age group;

c. For each age group, the number of target words were counted and grouped by word length;

d. and for each word shape, the overall frequency of occurrence was calculated according to the following formula:

N o.Occurrences

T otalOccurrences = OccurrenceF requency

122 4.5. Individual variability considerations

It is important to note that the range of words sampled and transcribed did not guarantee equal opportunities for the child to attempt all the consonants, which may be due to either the child’s active selection or limited range of vocabulary.

Furthermore, the data collected were of spontaneous interactions; therefore, the occurrence of target segments varied from one child to another, whether a child would have a chance to use a segment or how many times a segment would occur. There may be evidence of ‘avoidance’ strategies in the children’s phonological development. The mere non-existence of a feature or a segment in children’s production does not mean that the child does not have the skills to produce it.

The collected data incorporates many variable factors, some of which are individual to the child and some are environmental or a combination of both factors. For example, if a child was recorded near his naptime, he or she may produce fewer words than a child who just woke up. Other factors may be determined by the parent’s ability to stimulate the child and maintain his/her interest during the recording sessions. Many children were used to spending long periods of time with their nannies rather than the parents, hence the parent-child interaction was not as naturalistic as it was expected to be.

These factors must be taken into consideration when accounting for the age of acquisition, and more importantly the issue of individual variations and the criteria used for identifying consonant acquisition.