Consonants and Vowels
How do infants learn where one word ends and another begins? A new study suggests that they learn a “key pattern,” as noted in Cognitive Daily:
language learners look to patterns in the consonants for information about where words start and end; they look to vowels to understand the role of words in a sentences.
Charlie was able to say most vowel sounds long before he could say most consonant sounds (with the exception of “duh“—that was the only thing he said when he started doing ABA and speech therapy in the fall of 1999). Sitting beside the speech therapist, I became more and more aware of how saying differents sounds is a physical, oral-motor effort. Charlie simply struggled to get his lips, tongue, and the parts of his mouth into the same position as the therapist’s and ours. Getting in initial sounds like /l/ and /ch/ and final ones like /nt/ is an ongoing effort.
It’s just been in the past year or so that he has been able to say most of the sounds of English, and I’m not at all sure how this has affected his understanding of words. Teaching Charlie to talk has certainly helped to make me e-nun-ci-ate and ar-ti-cu-late every syllable, with extra care.
Tags: asd, asperger, autism, Baby, consonants, Language, linguistics, Parenting, pdd-nos, vowels
3 opinions for Consonants and Vowels
M
Apr 8, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Your post from a few months back about the way his relationship to language and yours parallel one another…it was one of my favorite Dr. Chew posts. I can’t remember the title of it now, but it basically described that his approach to words is different but equal in intensity…it was a point beautifully made.
Marla
Apr 8, 2008 at 9:04 pm
“struggled to get his lips, tongue, and the parts of his mouth into the same position as the therapist’s and ours.” Yes, our situation with M as well. Lindamood Bell has actual photos of the mouth in the different shapes and we played all sorts of games using those pictures for months. She had to be taught how to do every sound and then she was able to do the alphabet.
Daisy
Apr 10, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I, too, have learned to speak clearly — not because of Amigo’s autism, but because of his blindness.
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