Acquisition of the European Portuguese Uvular Rhotic in Children With Typical Versus Protracted Phonological Development

The following paper describes monolingual acquisition of the uvular rhotic in typically developing (TD) Portuguese children and those with protracted development (PPD). Empirical evidence will be provided in order to discuss how the uvular rhotic is categorized in European Portuguese (EP). A wide variety of variants has been attested for the uvular rhotic in adult EP, the most frequent being dorsal fricatives ([ʁ, χ, x]), followed by dorsal and apical trills [ʀ, r]. In addition, EP has an alveolar tap, which appears in onset clusters and codas. The /ʀ/ ‒ /ɾ/ contrast occurs only word-medially. For the current study, children's phonetic variants and congruence with adult pronunciations were the main focus. Data were analyzed from 87 TD children aged 3.0–6.6 years and a sample of 15 PPD children aged 3.0–8.3 years, organized by age groupings (data available at PhonBank). Speech data from two adults were used as reference. Match (accuracy) scores showed similar ages of acquisition for /ʀ/ and /ɾ/ in TD children but not in those with PPD (/ʀ/ ≫ /ɾ/). All groups showed a preference for dorsal fricative variants for /ʀ/ as shown in adults. A word position effect for voicing in adults and in TD children was not demonstrated in children with PPD. Overall, match and mismatch variants provided evidence supporting the processing of two phonological rhotics in EP.