Phonology for Communication Disorders is a book aimed at students and clinicians in speech-language pathology. It is intended to serve as a companion to Phonetics for Communication Disorders by the same authors, as familiarity with phonetics is essential to be able to follow the phonology book. Although aimed at practising clinicians and students, the book is not intended to be a practical book on clinical phonology, but instead addresses different theoretical constructs behind the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of phonological disorders. The term ‘phonological disorders’ is ambiguous and the authors acknowledge that it can relate to speech disorders of varying origins. Therefore it might include the classical ‘phonological delay/disorder’ as used by speech and language therapists to describe children who use ‘stopping’ of fricatives or ‘fronting’ of velar consonants. Phonological delays/disorders can be due to a difficulty in perceiving the difference between sounds, but also due to faulty storage of the sounds in phonological memory. These errors can also be applied consistently or inconsistently to the manner or place of production of speech sounds and may or may not follow developmental norms. Furthermore, the term speech disorder also refers to articulation disorders which generally affect one sound (such as lateral or interdental production of /s/) and are not related to a difficulty perceiving the difference between correct and incorrect production. Nowadays most speech and language therapists consider a child's phonological disorder to consist of an input or perception-type difficulty, a difficulty storing the sounds in memory, or of a more output or production-type difficulty which is covered in models of psycholinguistic processing. This book addresses how each theory might explain all types of speech disorders and relates these to assessment and treatment of the same.
The book is divided into chapters addressing how the best-known theories of phonology can be useful in clinical practice. In each case, there are exercises which help the reader to engage on a practical level with the material presented. The answers to these exercises are also provided in the appendices, which would make the book a useful study aid. Review questions and study topics and projects are presented at the end, which would aid an instructor on a course related to phonological disorders.
The first chapter is a review of a number of basic ideas such as the difference between phonetics and phonology, and the basic phonological constructs which need to be understood by the reader to engage with the content in the following chapters. Then sonority theory is reviewed, which looks at phonological analysis at the level of the syllable. The authors provide a critical review of the sonority sequencing principle for syllables and exceptions to this, and provide exercises to address the same. They then review the clinical literature for the application of this theory to speech disorders in children and adults. This is the structure adhered to for most of the following chapters related to phonological theory. For sonority theory, most of the clinically-related studies are from the 1990 s and, while useful, do not always entirely explain the disordered patterns observed, as analysis of speech at the level of the phoneme cannot always account for differences noted. The authors hold that the next theory, distinctive feature analysis, may provide a more useful framework, as it enables analysis of phonological features smaller than the phoneme. As before, the system of distinctive feature analysis is explored on a historical and practical level looking at data from a variety of languages and its potential application to clinical practice. A subsequent chapter reviews how this theory was further developed to apply more directly to clinical practice in the 1970 s and 1980 s and more recently by Gussenhoven & Jacobs (Reference Gussenhoven and Jacobs1998). These developments are reviewed in terms of studies applying them to clinical practice, including the analysis of vowel errors.
Generative phonology as outlined in Chomsky & Halle's Sound Pattern of English (1968) is then explored in terms of the levels of representation and rules involved. Exercises are again provided that look at other languages and accents of English. This type of analysis would be useful to clinicians working with bilingual children. In terms of clinical practice, the authors acknowledge that this approach might not readily be applied to speech disorders in children, as the patterns are often best described as the loss or restriction of phonological segments from the speaker's inventory. Nonetheless, they review what they consider to be the best application of the early generative model by Grunwell (Reference Grunwell1987) to speech data. More recently qualified clinicians might consider this approach to be out of date and instead use more recently developed models, such as psycholinguistic profiling, to provide insight into disordered speech data, and this is acknowledged by the authors. The generative phonological approach is also explained as rules that need to be applied cyclically to enable the description of phonological processes in lexical and prosodic phonology. The application of lexical phonology to the acquisition of plural morphological units in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is explored, and useful intervention ideas are offered
Theories outside of generative phonology are also explored, including autosegmental phonology and prosodic analysis. The clinical studies are again largely limited, and largely from the 1980 s and 1990 s, although prosodic analysis is argued to have a modern-day following in clinical work including child language. Both method of analysis and the review of metrical phonology would be useful to clinicians working in languages other than English. Theories which are likely to be more familiar to students and clinicians include Natural Phonology and Optimality Theory. Natural Phonology, and particularly the processes included, are central to the analysis and treatment of phonological disorders and have a long history in clinical practice, although the research literature highlights the shortfalls of such an approach. Optimality Theory would also be familiar to clinicians as an attempt to look at linguistically universal constraints in phonology and a move away from language-specific rules. It also has applications beyond phonology, to vocabulary, syntax and semantics, which makes it a very useful theory for clinicians to consider. As with other chapters, however, the description of Optimality Theory is largely to review its historical description with limited practical reference to clinical data. Articulatory/Gestural Phonology is also reviewed, though the authors acknowledge that it has so far limited application in clinical practice. They suggest that it can be useful in motor speech disorders and in delayed or disordered acquisition of a sound system. Government Phonology is also included although it has been largely applied to normal phonological acquisition rather than disordered speech.
Finally, cognitive, systemic, and grounded phonologies are grouped together in a single chapter and reviewed briefly. This is rather unfortunate as cognitive psychology models which are based on a psycholinguistic framework can be more clinically relevant than the previously reviewed theories and have been long used in the adult literature. Furthermore they have more recently come to the fore in child speech disorders with the developmental speech processing model introduced by Stackhouse & Wells (Reference Stackhouse and Wells1997, Reference Stackhouse and Wells2001). The account of cognitive theory reviewed in this chapter is Bybee's (Reference Bybee2001), which offers useful insights but lacks clinical application to disordered speech. Systematic and grounded phonology are reviewed more in terms of clinical applications.
The final chapter ties most of the theories reviewed in the book together, which is necessary given the number and diversity of theories reviewed. The authors attempt to describe all phonological disorders in phonological terms as opposed to motor-based errors which others have argued lie behind disordered speech. This is mainly done through reviewing the phonetics and phonology and how these are considered differently in clinical and descriptive linguistics. The authors review the problems with this division in clinical practice and provide some answers to the same. For practising clinicians this may mean updating and reviewing their understanding and analysis of speech errors. The authors state that a useful theoretical framework for clinical phonological analysis should enable us to group together errors to show their commonality, provide an explanation of the error, enable us to measure errors in terms of severity or normative development and provide guidance in planning therapeutic intervention. Many of the theories they review do accomplish this. They omit the crucial fact that for a busy clinician, the analysis also has to be swift and systematic and clinically useful. Many clients also do not present with clearly identifiable patterns and do not have a consistent error pattern, which complicates this process.
Overall, the chapters are relatively short (10–15 pages on average), which allows the reader to dip in and out of the different theories quickly, and the practical exercises and application to clinical data as reviewed in all chapters can help a busy clinician to determine whether this approach might be of use to them or otherwise. This is a useful reference book for practising clinicians who may need to be reminded of alternative ways of analysing speech data when dealing with clients who present with severe speech disorders or those with disorders that are difficult to analyse and remediate. It is not sufficiently practical to be useful to a busy clinician as an ‘online’ reference, which although not the explicit/stated aim of the book, might deter practitioners. Nevertheless, for students and teachers of clinical phonology and researchers in the area, it is a very useful book, which provides an excellent review of the various theoretical frameworks to the analysis of speech disorders.
