Cross-linguistic comparison of speech errors produced by English- and French-speaking preschool-age children with developmental phonological disorders

Twenty-four French-speaking children with developmental phonological disorders (DPD) were matched on percentage of consonants correct (PCC)-conversation, age, and receptive vocabulary measures to English-speaking children with DPD in order to describe how speech errors are manifested differently in these two languages. The participants' productions of consonants on a single-word test of articulation were compared in terms of feature-match ratios for the production of target consonants, and type of errors produced. Results revealed that the French-speaking children had significantly lower match ratios for the major sound class features [+ consonantal] and [+ sonorant]. The French-speaking children also obtained significantly lower match ratios for [+ voice]. The most frequent type of errors produced by the French-speaking children was syllable structure errors, followed by segment errors, and a few distortion errors. On the other hand, the English-speaking children made more segment than syllable structure and distortion errors. The results of the study highlight the need to use test instruments with French-speaking children that reflect the phonological characteristics of French at multiple levels of the phonological hierarchy.