Phonological acquisition, phonological theory, speech disorders.
The long-term goal of our research is to understand the development of the sound system by children with functional phonological delays. Development necessarily implies change, and in this sense, our focus is on the way in which children restructure the representation of words in the mental lexicon. For children with functional delays, restructuring necessarily requires an elaboration or reorganization of the phonological properties of the representation so as to better match those of the adult target. Thus far, our research has focused on identifying the prerequisite and clinical-linguistic conditions that promote phonological restructuring in this population.
In our current research, we take a new direction by exploring basic questions about the process of phonological restructuring itself. The hypotheses are that phonological restructuring will be influenced by the way in which children's representations are initially structured, organized and accessed from the lexicon. Projects 1 and 2 evaluate structural hypotheses in manipulations of errors resistant to change. Projects 3 and 4 test organizational hypotheses in manipulations of the lexical characteristics of words. Projects 5 and 6 investigate access hypotheses in manipulations of the morphosyntactic structure of words.
Linguistic theory is likely to benefit from experimental evidence of phonological restructuring in acquisition as a needed complement to available descriptive data from fully developed languages. Psycholinguistic theory is likely to gain from evidence of restructuring in children's productions in complement to predominately available perceptual data in acquisition. An applied consequence is that new variables associated with the structure, organization and access of representations may be incorporated to enhance the efficacy of phonological treatment for children with functional delays.
His research interests draw on the latest developments in linguistic theory in modeling phonological acquisition.
Linguistics; phonological theory and analysis; phonological acquisition.
Phonological acquisition, phonological theory, speech disorders.
Trademark law, phonetic confusability.
Biomedical Research, Multidisciplinary, Cognitive Development/Processes, Communications Law, Communicative Disorders, Speech, Language Acquisition and Development, Legal Education, Linguistics/Philology, Marketing, Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, Speech Pathology
