The present study focuses on the presence of covert contrasts in the speech of children with a phonological disorder. The hypothesis is that children with phonological disorders manipulate secondary acoustic cues in an attempt to distinguish the phonological contrasts. We used five audio recordings of the speech of five children with speech disorders, between four and five years of age, who showed the so-called “phonic substitution” involving the sound group of the fricatives. The data were edited and analyzed using the software PRAAT. A phonetic transcription of the first repetition of each child was performed by three evaluators, reaching a 66% agreement level. After the transcription, we carried out a contrastive phonological analysis of the production of the five children and, finally, an acoustic analysis of all the “substitutions”, based on six parameters. We discovered the existence of covert contrasts in the productions auditorily regarded as homophones by the evaluators, representing a total of 54% of total substitutions identified through an impressionistic approach by the evaluators. Children with phonological disorders are seen to rely on secondary acoustic cues in an attempt to distinguish fricative phonemes. The data obtained in this study allow us to reflect on the importance of considering the phonetic detail within the phonological models.
Phonological Acquisition; Phonetic; Phonological Disorder; Acoustic Analysis; Fricatives
