Phạm, B. & McLeod, S. (2019, in press April). Vietnamese-speaking children’s acquisition of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones in Northern Viet Nam. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
It was written as part of Dr Ben Phạm's PhD and is the first research to comprehensively describe Vietnamese children's speech acquisition.
Congratulations Ben!
Here is the abstract
Purpose: To investigate children’s acquisition of Vietnamese speech sounds.
Method: Participants were 195 children aged 2;2-5;11 living in Northern Viet Nam who spoke Vietnamese as their first language. Single-word samples were collected using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (Phạm, Le, & McLeod, 2016) to measure accuracy of consonants, semivowels, vowels, and tones.
Results: Percentage of consonants correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 46.39 (SD=7.95) and increased to 93.13 (SD=6.13) for children aged 5;6-5;11. The most difficult consonants were /ɲ, s, z, x/. Percentage of semivowels correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 70.74 (SD=14.38) and increased to 99.60 (SD=1.55) for children aged 5;6-5;11. Percentage of vowels correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 91.93 (SD=3.13) and increased to 98.11 (SD=2.79) for children aged 5;6-5;11. Percentage of tones correct for children aged 2;0-2;5 was 91.05 (SD=1.42) and increased to 96.65 (SD=3.42) for children aged 5;6-5;11. Tones 1, 2, 5, and 6 were acquired by the youngest age group; whereas, tone 3 (creaky thanh ngã) and tone 4 (dipping-rising thanh hỏi) did not achieve 90% accuracy by the oldest age group. Common phonological patterns (>10%) for children aged 2;0 to 3;11 were: fronting, stopping, deaspiration, aspiration, and semivowel deletion and for children aged 4;0 to 5;11 were: fronting and deaspiration.
Conclusion: This is the first comprehensive study of typically developing Northern Vietnamese children’s speech acquisition and provides preliminary data to support the emerging speech therapy profession in Viet Nam.
