Phonological Processes and Phonological Disorders

People tend to mix up the terms phonological processes and phonological disorders. But what is the difference between these two terms? 

Firstly, we have to understand what phonology means. Phonology is the study of sound (phoneme). Phonological processes are patterns of sound errors that typically developing children use to simplify speech as they are learning to talk. This may happen because they may not have the ability to coordinate their tongue with their teeth, jaw, palate and lips in order to produce clear speech.

For example, they may reduce a consonant cluster e.g. butterfly for bu….fly, missing out the sounds of ‘tter’ or even delete the weak syllable in a word e.g. nana for banana.

The presence of phonological processes in children are considered fairly common and a normal process of a child’s development. However, if such phonological processes persist beyond a certain age, it will be classified as a phonological disorder. For example, if a 4 year old child is using phonological process of reduplication e.g. saying ‘wawa’ for ‘water’, this would be considered as a delay because children normally should stop using that process by the age of 3 years old.

Below is a chart that was given by ASHA (American Speech and Hearing Association). It gives examples of the various phonological processes and the age by which these processes should be eliminated by.

Process	Example	Likely Age of Elimination
Velar Assimilation	kack for tack guck for duck	3
Nasal Assimilation	money for funny nunny for bunny	3
Fronting	tar for car date for gate	4
Stopping	pun for fun tee for see doo for zoo berry for very chop for shop top for chop dump for jump dat for that	/f, s/ — 3 /z, v/ — 4 sh, ch, j, th — 5
Gliding	wabbit for rabbit weg for leg	6–7
Deaffrication	ship for chip zhob for job	4
Cluster Reduction	top for stop keen for clean	with /s/ — 5 without /s/ — 4
Weak Syllable Deletion	nana for banana tato for potato	4
Final Consonant Deletion	bu for bus no for nose tree for treat	3

Reference:

https://www.asha.org/Practice-Portal/Clinical-Topics/Speech-Sound-Disorders-Articulation-and-Phonology/Selected-Phonological-Processes/