Phonological processes of the first language acquisition done by a two-year-old Indonesian child

Author : PUSPASARI, YOANNITA

This research is a case study on child?s language acquisition. The main focus of this study is on the analysis of phonological process of the words produced by a two-year-old Indonesian child. Realizing that there are a number of different theories of child?s language acquisition, it is interesting to know how the theory of phonological process proposed by David Ingram in general helps the Indonesian child to understand the language; and which phonological process mostly occur in his speech. This thesis presents further evidence and example of phonological process which involves substitution, assimilation, and syllable structure process. The data of an Indonesian child aged two years old is analyzed based on each process. The result of the research indicates that what described in Ingram?s phonological process theory also occurs in the subject?s speech such as substitution, assimilation and syllable structure process; and some of them are quite favored by the subject, as in stopping, fronting, substitution of retroflex, substitution of alveolar, deletion of unstressed syllable and reduplication. However, some of the phonological processes are absent in the subject?s speech such as gliding, vowel neutralization, vocalization, voicing, and labial assimilation. As the conclusion is drawn, the result of the study from the phonological process the subject is going through has proven that the subject already acquired most of the consonants and all the vowels in his first language. Phonological process by David Ingram has universal significance in some processes, which are extremely common across all languages and all children. The subject shows no uniqueness in acquiring his language. In fact, he follows the general phonological process as the other children do.

Keyword : psycholinguistics, language, acquisition, linguistics, child, phonological

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1378/