Phonological Development and Disorders in Children : A Multilingual Perspective

This book critically examines the effects of language specificity on phonological acquisition and disorder through a collection of empirical studies of children learning typologically very different languages. The studies address many theoretical, clinical and methodological issues, such as: What role do developmental universals and the ambient language play in language acquisition? How should one account for the similarities and differences in the phonological development between normally and atypically developing children, between monolingual and bilingual children, and between bilingual children sharing one language? What implications do these similarities and differences have for clinical assessment and diagnosis? The book provides much-needed baseline information for clinical assessment and diagnosis.

Zhu Hua is Chair of Educational Linguistics and Director of the Mosaic Group for Research on Multilingualism, University of Birmingham. She is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the UK. Her main research interests span across multilingual and intercultural communication and child language.

Barbara Dodd is retired, holding Honorary Professorships at the Universities of Queensland, Melbourne, Curtin, and Charles Sturt in Australia. She continues to collaborate on research projects and supervises postgraduate students. Her recent research concerns the nature, assessment, and treatment of articulation and phonological impairments in children. Current treatment case studies are evaluating a novel intervention approach for toddlers with phonological disorder and analyses of cohort data are identifying types speech impairments that fail to resolve by seven years.