• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.63-73
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• 2015

This study investigated longitudinally early vocalization and phonological developments of typically developing children. Ten typically developing children participated in the study from 9 months to 18 months of age. Spontaneous utterance samples were collected at 9, 12, 15, 18 months of age and phonetically transcribed and analyzed. Utterance samples were classified into 5 levels using Stark Assessment of Early Vocal Development-Revised(SAEVD-R). The data analysis focused on 4 and 5 levels of vocalizations classified by SAEVD-R and word productions. The percentage of each vocalization level, vocalization length, syllable structures, and consonant inventory were obtained. The results showed that the percentages of level 4 and 5 vocalizations and word significantly increased with age and the production of syllable structures containing consonants significantly increased around 12 and 15 months of age. On average, the children produced 4 types of syllable structure and 5.4 consonants at 9 months and they produced 5 types of syllable structure and 9.8 consonants at 18 months. The phonological development patterns in this study were consistent with those analyzed from children's meaningful utterances in previous studies. The results support the perspective on the continuity between babbling and early speech. This study has clinical implications in early identification and speech-language intervention for young children with speech delays or at risk.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.20
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• pp.5-27
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• 2010

This paper studies the relation between canonical/variegated babble (CB/VB) and early speech in an infant acquiring Mandarin Chinese from 9 to 17 months. The infant was audio-and video-taped in her home almost every week. The data analyzed here come from 1,621 utterances extracted from 23 sessions ranging from 30 minutes to one hour, from age 00:09;07 to 01:05;27. The data was digitized, and segments from 23 sessions were transcribed in narrow IPA and coded for analysis. Babble was coded from age 00:09;07 to 01:00;00, and words were coded from 01:00;00 to 01:05;27, proto-words appeared at 11 months, and some babble was still present after 01:10;00. 3821 segments were counted in CB/VB utterances, plus the segments found in 899 word tokens. The data transcription was completed and checked by the author and was rechecked by two other researchers who majored in Chinese phonetics in order to ensure the reliability, we reached an agreement of 95.65%. Mandarin Chinese is phonetically very rich in consonants, especially affricates: it has aspirated and unaspirated stops in labial, alveolar, and velar places of articulation; affricates and fricatives in alveolar, retroflex, and palatal places; /f/; labial, alveolar, and velar nasals; a lateral;[h]; and labiovelar and palatal glides. In the child's pre-speech phonetic repertoire, 7 different consonants and 10 vowels were transcribed at 00:09;07. By 00:10;16, the number of phones was more than doubled (17 consonants, 25 vowels), but the rate of increase slowed after 11 months of age. The phones from babbling remained active throughout the child's early and subsequent speech. The rank order of the occurrence of the major class types for both CB and early speech was: stops, approximants, nasals, affricates, fricatives and lateral. As expected, unaspirated stops outnumbered aspirated stops, and front stops and nasals were more frequent than back sounds in both types of utterances. The fact that affricates outnumbered fricatives in the child's late babble indicates the pre-speech influence of the ambient language. The analysis of the data also showed that: 1) the phonetic characteristics of CB/VB and early meaningful speech are extremely similar. The similarities of CB/VB and speech prove that the two are deeply related; 2) The infant has demonstrated similar preferences for certain types of sounds in the two stages; 3) The infant's babbling was patterned at segmental level, and this regularity was similarly evident in the early speech of children. The three types being coronal plus front vowel; labial plus central and dorsal plus back vowel exhibited much overlap in the phonetic forms of CB/ VB and early speech. So the child's CB/ VB at this stage already shared the basic architecture, composition and representation of early speech. The evidence of similarity between CB/VB and early speech leaves no doubt that phones present in CB/VB are indeed precursors to early speech.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.3-14
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between conversational function and question type in mothers' utterances and their infant's language development. The subjects were 20 infants from 1;07 to 1;11 years of age in Yanji, China. Each child's spontaneous natural speech during interaction with his/her mother was videotaped for about 30 minutes. The children and their mother's spontaneous utterances were transcribed and coded for the number of type and token of word, grammatical morpheme conversational function and type of question in mother's language input to her child. The result showed that mothers used questions as the most frequent conversational function with their infants. The number of questions in conversational function in mothers' utterances positively correlated with the type of word, type of morpheme and grammatical morpheme in infants' utterance. However, there was no correlation between mothers' language input and infant early language development.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.161-169
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• 2014

This study investigated changes in the prelinguistic vocal production of typically developing infants aged 5-20 months based on Stark Assessment of Early Vocal Development-Revised (SAEVD-R). Fifty-eight typically developing infants participated in the study, and they were divided into four age groups, 5-8 months, 9-12 months, 13-16 months, and 17-20 months of age. Vocalization samples were collected from infants' play activities and were classified into 5 levels and 23 types using SAEVD-R. The results revealed that the four age groups showed significant differences in production proportion of vocalization levels. Level 1, 2, 4, and 5 vocalizations exhibited significantly different across the four age groups. Level 3 was predominantly produced across every age group. Therefore, the vocalization level was not significantly different across the four age groups. Especially, vowels in Level 3 vocalization predominantly produced across all ages during a long period. Also, significant increases in the proportion of Levels 4 and 5 occurred after 9 months, which suggested that the production of cannonical syllables is a key indicator of advancement in prelinguistic vocal development. The results have clinical implication in early identification and speech-language intervention for young children with speech delays or at risk.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.205-216
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• 2005

This study investigated aspects of caregiver's input relating to the early development of nouns and verbs. Subjects were 34 Korean-Chinese children in Yanji, China. At 1 year of age each child's spontaneous speech during interaction with his/her caregiver was videotaped for about 30 minutes. The children's spontaneous utterances were transcribed and coded on the lexical level(nouns and verbs) and the pragmatic level. Children's speech was recorded, transcribed and coded again at 2 years of age. Results showed that children used more verbs when they were older; there were no differences between the two ages in mother's pragmatic utterances but when they were two-years-old children used more actionoriented utterances and object-described utterances. Mother's input was related to children's pragmatic utterances.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.163-178
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• 2004

The hypothesis was tested that children whose families differ in socioeconomic status(SES) and educational level differ in their rates of productive language development because they have different language-learning experiences. Naturalistic interaction between mothers and their children was video taped. Transcripts of these interactions provided the basis for estimating the growth in children's productive vocabularies and properties of maternal speech. The sixty children from age 1 to 3 were selected in Yanji, China. The results show that the high educated mothers' children grew more than the low educated mothers' children in their mean length of utterances. Properties of maternal speech that differed as a function of mother's educational level fully accounted for this difference. Implications of these findings for mechanisms of environmental influence on child development are discussed.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.73-85
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• 2016

Speech-print mapping awareness is defined as the awareness of the principles underpinning how speech sound is matched to print symbols. Chinese is unique in that it follows the one syllable one character mapping principle. The present study examined the predictive power of speech-print mapping awareness in young children's word reading. Seventy-four Hong Kong children from the first and second kindergarten years were tested with phonological awareness, visual skills, syllable-level mapping awareness, and Chinese reading ability at Time 1. Chinese reading abilities were tested again 1 year later. It was found that syllable-level mapping awareness predicted Chinese word reading abilities 12 months later. Further, it seemed that the link of syllable mapping to Chinese reading is particularly significant for beginning readers. The findings suggest that understanding the language-specific speech-print mapping principle is critical for reading acquisition at the early stage of reading development.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.65-71
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether young children with cleft palate differ from those of noncleft typically developing children in terms of expressive vocabulary size, phonological characteristics and lexical selectivity. A total of 12 children with cleft palate and 12 noncleft children who were matched by age and gender participated in the study. The groups were compared by size of expressive vocabulary reported on Korean version of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and the number of different words, consonant inventory, the percentage of words beginning with obstruents and vowels, nasal, and glottal sounds, and the percentage of words which do not include obstruents in a language sample. Also, correlation analysis were performed to examine the relationship between measures on size of expressive vocabulary and phonological characteristics. The results showed that expressive vocabulary size and consonant inventory for children with cleft palate produced significantly smaller than those for noncleft children. Children with cleft palate produced significantly more words beginning with vowel or which do not include obstruents, and fewer words beginning with obstruents than noncleft children. The two groups showed different results on significant correlations between measures on size of expressive vocabulary and phonological characteristics indicating that children with cleft palate show different lexical selectivity from their noncleft peers. The results suggest that children with cleft palate aged 18-30 months demonstrate a slower rate of lexical and phonological development compared with their noncleft peers and they develop lexical selectivity reflecting cleft palate speech. The results will have a clinical implication on speech-language intervention for young children with cleft palates.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.834-839
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• 2010

Purpose: This study investigates Korean speech sound development, including articulatory error patterns, among the Japanese-Korean children whose mothers are Japanese immigrants to Korea. Methods: The subjects were 28 Japanese-Korean children with normal development born to Japanese women immigrants who lived in Jeonbuk province, Korea. They were assessed through Computerized Speech Lab 4500. The control group consisted of 15 Korean children who lived in the same area. Results: The values of the voice onset time of consonants /$p^h$/, /t/, /$t^h$/, and/$k^*$/ among the children were prolonged. The children replaced the lenis sounds with aspirated or fortis sounds rather than replacing the fortis sounds with lenis or aspirated sounds, which are typical among Japanese immigrants. The children showed numerous articulatory errors for /c/ and /I/ sounds (similar to Koreans) rather than errors on /p/ sounds, which are more frequent among Japanese immigrants. The vowel formants of the children showed a significantly prolonged vowel /o/ as compared to that of Korean children ($P$<0.05). The Japanese immigrants and their children showed a similar substitution /n/ for /ɧ/ [Japanese immigrants (62.5%) vs Japanese-Korean children (14.3%)], which is rarely seen among Koreans. Conclusion: The findings suggest that Korean speech sound development among Japanese-Korean children is influenced not only by the Korean language environment but also by their maternal language. Therefore, appropriate language education programs may be warranted not only or immigrant women but also for their children.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.269-276
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• 2013

This study was aimed of the effects of the Parent's Gestalt Speech Intervention for stuttering development of Fluency disorder Child. The Parent's Gestalt Speech Intervention was made up of a program understand phase, an awareness phase, a change phase and, finally, an arrangement and termination phase. The subjects 6 (female 2, male 4) of this research were developed a stuttering behavior without any apparent neurological damage or other speech or developmental impediments. To access their stuttering behaviors, I used methods for observing levels of behavioral in each phase. The results of the study are as follows: In regard to stuttering behavior, word repetition frequency decreased in the interim assessments, showing that the learning of fluent speech was acquired early in the therapy process. In conclusion, the results of the study show that Parent's Gestalt Speech Intervention for stuttering development of Fluency disorder Child.