Aspects of Phonological Acquisition in Children Speaking Sidaamu Afoo

Abstract

This study tries to describe aspects of phonological developments in children speaking Sidaamu-Afoo, a Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, East Africa. Data were collected from six children aged between 3;6 and 4;9 years. The data were first recorded orthographically and then transcribed using IPA. Results showed the speech production patterns noted in the children studied here appear to be varied in type. Some of them can be taken as age appropriate, as similar patterns have already been reported crosslinguistically for the same age rages, while others are language specific. There are still some developmental realisations, which do not appear to be age appropriate for the children studied. Whether the occurrence of these patterns at such late ages is typical in the language or signs of delayed phonological development needs to be verified with comprehensive data taken from larger sample size.