2011 Volume 52 Issue 4 Pages 348-359
The Japanese Articulation Test (second edition) enables us to analyze several aspects of phonological processes such as place, manner, and voicing/non-voicing of consonants via free descriptions by speech therapists in the "Summary of Phonetic Viewpoint" section. However, it is difficult to conduct detailed analyses of phonological processes without certain knowledge of phonological disorders and processes. In this paper, we introduce a tentative version of the Phonological Process Analysis Tool which can be adjunctively administered with the Japanese Articulation Test (second edition). This tool enables even novice speech therapists to correctly analyze phonological processes by checking against the list on the phonological processes record form. Fifteen phonological processes were chosen as the target phoneme processes for this tool. They were first divided into two broad categories, which were the whole-word and the segment change processes. The reduction process was set as the sub-category of the whole-word process; and the voicing, place and manner, and nasalization processes were set as the sub-categories of the segment change process. At the present stage, only the percentage of the phonological process is calculated via the Phonological Process Analysis Tool because it is not yet standardized. As the next step, the relations among age and types and number of phoneme processes should be clarified via data collection with the aim of arriving at standardization in the future.
