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Purpose: We examined language samples of young children learning African American English (AAE) to determine if and when their use of auxiliaries shows dialect-universal and dialect-specific effects. Method: The data were longitudinal language samples obtained from two children, ages 18 to 36 months, and three children, ages 33 to 51 months. Dialect-universal analyses examined age of first form and early uses of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries. Dialect-specific analyses focused on rates of overt marking by auxiliary type and syntactic construction and for BE by surface form and succeeding element. Results: Initial production of auxiliaries occurred between 19 and 24 months. The children's forms were initially restricted and produced in syntactically simple constructions. Over time, they were expanded in ways that showed their rates of marking to vary by auxiliary type, their rates of BE and DO marking to vary by syntactic construction, and their rates of BE marking to vary by surface form and succeeding element. Conclusions: Development of auxiliaries by young children learning AAE shows both dialect-universal and dialect-specific effects. The findings are presented within a development chart to guide clinicians in the assessment of children learning AAE and in the treatment of AAE-speaking children with language impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The contemporary practices of delivering speech, language, and hearing services in schools reflect palpable gains in professional sensitivity to linguistic and cultural diversity. Method: This article reviews the dominant research themes on the oral language of African American preschoolers who contribute to such diversity in the United States. Specifically, it contrasts the historical and current frameworks that have guided studies of (a) such children's acquisition and use of English and (b) the strategies used to assess and modify their language. Conclusion: Research initiatives that can expand knowledge about this group are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to describe the types and frequency of conversational repairs used by African American (AA) children in relationship to their geographic locations and levels of performance on commonly used speech-language measures. Method: The strategies used to initiate repairs and respond to repair requests were identified in audiovisual records of spontaneous speech sampled from 120 Head Start students in Michigan (n = 69) and Louisiana (n = 51) at 3 years of age. The 30-40-min samples were elicited with common stimuli and activities while the children interacted with an adult examiner. Results: All participants initiated repairs and responded to examiner requests for conversational repairs. Some repair strategies were observed more often than others. The frequency, but not the types, of some of the strategies used varied significantly with participant location and level of speech-language performance. Conclusion: AA children used the same types of conversational repair strategies that have been observed among young speakers of Standard English varieties. Clinical Implication: Use of conversational repairs should be included among the pragmatic behaviors expected for 3-year-old AA children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to show (a) whether the minimal competence core (MCC) of consonants used by African American preschoolers in I. Stockman (2006) can be observed in a larger group of children using shorter and more controlled speech samples and (b) whether the MCC pass/fail outcomes are differentially related to performance on selected criterion measures of typical and atypical speech. Method: Word-initial single and clustered consonants were sampled in the conversational speech of 120 Head Start students who were distributed in a northern (Lansing, Michigan) and a southern (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) regional location. Results: The data generally corroborated the earlier preliminary report, which was based on just 7 children. More than 80% of the children met criteria for passing the core set of phonetic competencies, which included word-initial consonant clusters and 13 consonant singletons. Pass/fail outcomes were significantly related to suspected clinical delay and the overall Percentage of Consonants Correct--Revised (PCC-R). Conclusion: The initial consonant core identified in this study is potentially useful for identifying speech delay among young African American children. Clinical and research issues related to its use for diagnostic screening are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies have stressed those aspects of African American English (AAE) that differ from Standard English (SE) varieties. Therefore word- final consonant performance has been investigated most often. In contrast, this intensive study aimed to reveal whether a common core of initial consonants is used by typically developing AAE children at or close to the 3rd birthday. More than 2000 phonetically transcribed utterances were extracted from the audiovisual archives of natural samples of speech for seven children. All seven children met the productivity criterion for a shared core of 15 sounds in their repertoire of correctly produced word-initial consonants. The children also met the criterion for using word-initial consonant clusters or blends that commonly included the stop+sonorant type. The results provided preliminary evidence for a minimal competence core of word-initial consonants that is consistent with developmental data on typically developing speakers of SE and other languages besides English. Sample sizes of more than 50 spontaneous utterances were required to elicit these core features. Research and clinical implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major goal of second-language acquisition research is to identify factors that influence speaker/listener errors. This study focused on the markedness of L2 consonant characteristics as one such factor. Markedness theory has well served the search for performance constraints that go beyond native-language interference. Its application to phonological errors in particular has been fertile ground for testing the claim that L2 errors reflect universal constraints on learning linguistic forms. Evidence for this claim has been sought more often from the syllabic structure of words than the properties of the speech sounds comprising it. Thus, given the universally favored CV syllable shape, L2 errors are expected to occur more often in the more marked syllable-final than syllable-initial word position. Our study revealed, however, that the markedness of the syllabic position can be neutralized by the type of consonant sounds that are perceived and produced: The expected rank ordering of initial and final consonant errors of Mandarin speakers of English did not conform to Anderson's (1987) hierarchy as predicted by a modified version of the Markedness Differential Hypothesis. These learners' syllable final/initial errors could be related to the consonant's manner and place of articulation, as well as to its voicing and sonority features as described in other studies; the greater vulnerability of their nasal than their oral stops to syllable position constraints implicates the markedness of the speech sounds themselves as a factor limiting performance. This study, then, adds to the growing body of evidence that L2 errors are differentially influenced by the inherent properties of the L2 speech sounds. The research focus on segmental sound properties becomes important in view of the fact that so much of the syllable structure research has focused on oral stops; our findings suggest that research on syllable structure constraints may not be generalized across sound c... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]