Consonant Articulating Errors in Khmer-Speaking Preschool Children: A Picture-Naming Task Analysis

PURPOSE: Consonant errors (mainly phonetic and phonological errors) as a phenomenon in speech development are frequently observed in preschool children's daily speech communication across languages. Since the Khmer language is a low-source language, consonant articulating error patterns of Khmer-speaking children have not been explored to date, leaving open the question whether the patterns are similar to those found in high-source languages such as English. To bridge the gap, this study investigated the on-spot speech of Khmer preschool children across three age groups (3;0 [years;months] to 5;11) using a picture-naming test with 203 pictures of varying complexity. METHOD: The naming data of 60 (34 girls and 26 boys) and 56 (34 girls and 22 boys) children, respectively, for two tests were recorded and transcribed for analysis, with errors categorized into (a) phonetic errors (substitution, deletion, addition, or distortion) and (b) phonological errors (regular and irregular). RESULTS: The results showed that children aged 3;0-3;11 had the lowest speech sound accuracy among the three groups (3;0-5;11), with more frequent phonetic errors in substitution and deletion and more regular versus irregular phonological errors, including final consonant deletion, lateralization, initial consonant deletion, glottalization, and alveolarization substitution, but the errors did not reach statistically significant differences among the three age groups. The patterns are consistent with the developmental trends of speech sound error found in English and other high-source languages. CONCLUSION: These findings reveal the unique speech sound error patterns in Khmer preschool children, which may partly arise from linguistic universality during children's language development and partly be attributed to the typological features peculiar to the Khmer language. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33684361.