A phonological assessment test for child Greek.

ABSTRACT This article advances a clinical tool for assessing typical and atypical phonological development in children speaking standard Modern Greek or Hellenic (ISO 639.1, el). The proposed tool develops a comprehensive test that is archetypical of the standard idiom and of predominant dialectal variations and seeks to be readily available for logopedics and language researchers of child Greek anywhere. By utilising the constraint-based nonlinear theoretical framework, this Greek battery complements a larger study that utilises equivalent methodology in the evaluation of phonological acquisition of monolingual children with typical and protracted phonological development across several languages. As an example, the efficacy of the tool is tested by administering it to a monolingual Greek-speaking girl, aged 4;8, whose speech shows evidence of delay on different phonological levels when compared to known monolingual norms/data. The ultimate aim is a standardised test to help establish reliable quantitative norms/stages in child Greek development, as a benchmark for assessment and intervention of phonological delay and disorder.


Introduction
This study proposes an assessment tool of child phonological development in standard Modern Greek (el) (ISO 639.1, 2018), including predominant dialect characteristics, hereon Greek. The proposed procedures aim at evaluating the typically and atypically developing Greek speech of mono/multilingual children between 2;6 and 9;0 years, being representative of targeted Greek phonotactics and utilising the methodology of a larger crosslinguistic project (e.g. Bernhardt & Stemberger, 2017). Based on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition, 'test' is 'a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use' (https://en.oxforddiction aries.com/definition/test). On these grounds, the study develops a test (the procedures) to be used in future cross-sectional phonological research on child developmental Greek and provides an illustration of how it is implemented. The reasons that have necessitated the establishment of such an assessment tool, the guiding theoretical underpinnings utilised as well as related review on Greek phonology and child phonological development/assessment, are described in the introduction. This is followed by a detailed description of the proposed test and its accompanying pilot implementation. This article continues with an analysis of the data and concludes with a deliberation on the efficacy of the proposed tool and future directions. allophonic complementary distribution. Among the allophones, ɾ→[r ɹ] is in free nonobligatory allophony and the rest in obligatory complementary distribution. The phonological structure of Greek segments is outlined in the Scan Form (pp. 5, 9, 10), provided as supplementary material, where all permitted consonant clusters and vowel combinations in stressed and unstressed syllables are also shown. Double consonants are found in Greek orthography (e.g. εμμονή /ԑmoni/ 'obsession'), but geminates only exist in certain Greek varieties (e.g. Cypriot, south-eastern Aegean). The phonetics of Greek is increasingly represented in research (e.g. Nicolaidis, 2001;Nirgianaki, 2014; see Arvaniti, 2007;Botinis, 2011, for reviews/analyses).

Syllables
As a syllable-timed language, Greek is characterised by consecutive syllables of equal duration.
Greek has closed syllables, but the tendency is for open ones (Holton, Mackridge, & Philipaki-Warburton, 2002), where the word structure formula C (0-3) VC (0-1) (Mennen & Okalidou, 2007, p. 400) predominantly holds. The rime in Greek may typically comprise a nucleus (#V #Vi, V#, iV#, .V., .iV., or syllabic consonant in exclamations) or a nucleus and mainly a singleton coda, that is, [f v s z θ m n l ɾ k ks x g γ ʝ] word-initially, word-medially (that includes ð), and overwhelming /s n/word-finally, except in some archaic terms and #-[p b bl t ts dz s z f st m n ŋg l lt lf lm lk ɾt ɾn ɾð k kt ks x], -# [p b t ts dz z f ft v vɾ st z θ m mbɾ n nd ns ŋg l lt lf ls lm lk ɾ ɾt ɾs ɾð ɾts k kl kt ks g x γ] in loans. Table 2 shows the distribution of Greek syllables per word position, as computed by Setatos (1974); tokens are shown in parentheses. CVCC, CCVCC, and CVCCC appear in loans, while CiVC is an exclamation. The /i/ in targeted syllables like the last one, and elsewhere (e.g. CiV, CVi, CCiV, etc.) throughout the text and tables, refers to either the /i/ in falling diphthongs or to the context of the Greek palatalisation rule, where a targeted /C/ followed by /i/ and another /V/ palatalises the consonant (see more in previous section on segments and clusters).

Word structure
Greek has a trochaic foot (Holton et al., 2002). Words are mostly disyllabic or multisyllabic (3-5 syllables or more, the longest being compounds); monosyllables are few in type, in common usage when they are function words, and include loans. Not all syllable combinations are possible in the permitted word structures with V, CV, CVC, CCV, CCVC, and VC being more common (see Scan Form (p. 3), provided as supplementary material). Among these, the most frequent word structures, as computed by Setatos (1974), are shown in Table  3 (those with over eight tokens for single-to three-syllable words and over two tokens for four-syllable words).   ( *Adapted from Setatos (1974, in Greek).

Stress
Greek has dynamic stress, primary and secondary, typically falling on the syllable nucleus (vowel-diphthong-syllabic consonant) of certain words in phrases/sentences. There are two basic rules: two consecutive syllables cannot be both stressed, and only a maximum of two unstressed syllables may follow the primary stress (Holton et al., 2002). Stress has a semantically contrastive function in Greek differentiating between otherwise identical words/phrases, for example, μιλιά/μίλια [miˈʎɐ/ˈmiʎɐ] 'speech/miles' and δεν είπε γιατί φεύγει [ðԑn ipԑ ʝati/ʝatí fԑvʝi] 'he didn't say why/because he is leaving'. Secondary stress may have a contrastive function, but it is primarily optional. Greek also has enclitic stress in certain prosodic phrases, for example, το πρόσωπό της [to ˈpɾo.so.ˌpo tis] 'her face'.
Greek dialects Representative work on Greek dialectal phonology may be found in Trudgill (2003) and references therein; for Cypriot Greek, see Newton (1972), Taxitari

Method
The Greek test The clinical tool for phonological elicitation and analysis proposed here is named Phonological Assessment for Greek (el), that is, PAel, and targets the typically and atypically developing Greek speech of mono/multilingual children between 2;6 and 9;0 years. A single-word and narrative elicitation technique is used, adopting the methodology of the crosslinguistic project across 17 languages undertaken by Bernhardt, Stemberger, and colleagues (see introduction). With regard to the experimental design, PAel utilises the single case (multiple baseline) design. PAel comprises 150 content words (mostly nouns/adjectives) divided into two parts: a SCREENER: 50 words intended for preliminary/basic assessment (Tables 4 and 5), EXTENDED: 100 words for assessing more advanced phonological skills (Tables 6-8), and a two-part narrative/ story built on SCREENER/EXTENDED lists that broadens further the list's phonotactic representation.
The PAel word list was constructed to include variable representative phonotactic contexts of the Greek inventory, also accounting for underlying nonlinear interactions.
Greek phonotactics are represented (a) in imageable words, familiar to children; (b) accounting for distribution frequencies: common words, marked/unmarked segments, various prosodic contexts, syllable types (structure/stress), and word structures/lengths (e.g. bilabials vs. fricatives, more /s/ than /g/, more CV than CCCV); (c) in cumulative Aiming for efficiency and speed, the test lasts between 10 and 30-40 min (screener and full list, respectively), also depending on child/context (attention, need for narrative, prompts, etc.). Select words in the list (or narrative parts) may separately furnish assessment/therapy or language research, as necessary.

Phonotactic and distributional analysis
Sixty-seven words in PAel are common in adult speech (www.1000mostcommonwords. com), 65 are child vocabulary/everyday terms/animals, and 18 (5 verbs) are purposefully added because they broaden represented phonotactics. Word shapes and targeted/produced depictions in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are shown in Tables 4-8; more new types that include function (mono/bi/multisyllabic) words are supplemented in the narrative (1001 word total), alongside a depiction of phonetic/dialectal variation (see Appendix).
% (tokens/total) Word shapes (# types/tokens) 1-σ (2/4) 2.7% (4/150) ˈCVC (3)  PAel has the potential to stand for PAL, also improving it to address limitations in terms of: (a) monosyllabic content words with singleton/clusters (Tables 4 and 6), (b) more cluster types/contexts and more word shapes/lengths, (c) more content words that extend prosodic contexts for singletons/clusters, (d) representing the phonotactic distributions of targeted Greek, (e) a complementary narrative to contextualise words providing alternative IPA renditions (formal/informal/dialectal) that include variable stress types, and adding over 200 new words, of which about half are verbs, as well as, several nonimageable ones (i.e. function words) whose phonotactics are not representable in word lists, and (e) colour images for each test word. Furthermore, narrative illustration is part of the procedures.

The pilot test
This section describes the elicitation, transcription, and phonological analysis methods used in pilot-testing PAel.

Elicitation method
The girl recruited for the pilot test, a monolingual Greek speaker aged 4;8, is the only child of middle-class parents living near Athens (Greece) and has no history of speech-language impairment, communication difficulties, or any known sensory, cognitive, anatomical conditions. On a social visit, the investigator/author (a phonetically trained native-Greek speaker) noticed inconsistency in the child's speech given her age and asked permission to test the child's phonological skill. Following parental consent, the investigator sat with the child in a quiet, informal setting and encouraged the child to teach Greek to a doll. Immediately taking to operating the pc-run slide show by pushing a button, the child subsequently named the pictures (printed picture cards and a puppet may also be used). In a single session, both the SCREENER and EXTENDED lists were administered in this order lasting 8 and 32 min, respectively, with a few minutes break between. An OLYMPUS VN-712PC was used for audio-recording the session. Running speech samples were also collected as part of a familiarisation session prior to administering the test, and afterwards during a free play session, but are not included in the analysis here.

Methods for phonetic and phonological analysis
The data retrieved from the WMA audios were transcribed in IPA by the investigator. Using language analysis software for numerical computations is necessary for large datasets (e.g. PHON: Rose & MacWhinney, 2014;CLAN: MacWhinney, 2000) but not so in this study. For transcription consensus purposes, two native-Greek phoneticians were  (pp. 4, 9), and consonantal clusters/sequences (p.6-8). It is a comprehensive index and easy to fill in (or just highlight) client evidence-based information. The scan includes a preview section for establishing strengths/weaknesses (p.2) and a conclusive summary page (p.11). A Greek translation of the scan is also freely available: at http://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca.
Her mismatches (Table 16) are accounted by universal developmental processes (e.g. Beers, 1995;Grunwell, 1981;PAL, 1995) leading to typical developmental mismatches (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 1998;Mennen & Okalidou, 2007;PAL, 1995). Some intermittent errors in acquired consonants also involved prototypical processes (e.g. stopping, voicing). Table 16 details these processes and errors with examples. The presence of the following processes attests to a possible phonological delay: prevocalic voicing and stopping (disappearing by 2;6), fronting of velars (by 3;0), and assimilation (by 3;6) (Beers, 1995;PAL, 1995). Her featural weaknesses on Manner: [LIQUID], [AFFRICATE], and Place: [DORSAL] in the acquisition of singletons (see Scan Form (p. 9), provided as supplementary material) are also the main sources of cluster mismatches. Table 17 shows the rules in the child's consonant cluster mismatches which involve mainly reduction but also deletion and vowel epenthesis. For a recent review of patterns in typical and atypical development of clusters crosslinguistically, see Babatsouli and Sotiropoulos (2018). The targeted CCs involving [LIQUID] reduced to [-LIQUID], and those involving [DORSAL] were generally reduced to either member; an exception was γλώσσα /ɣlosa/→[losa] 'tongue'. When one member was [FRICATIVE], then the child's reduction followed Pater and Barlow's (2003) axiom, that is, if a segment of a given sonority is retained instead of the fricative, then all segments of lesser sonority are retained rather than the fricative. Thus, because /xn/→[n], then /xt/→[t, k]; an exception was: /pԑxniðʝɐ/ [pԑciðʝɐ] 'toys'. Her targeted CCC sSTOPLIQ, also reduced to [-LIQUID], that is, to an sSTOP or to a STOP. Her targeted CCC FRICSTOPFRIC, /ftç/ reduced to [fç], deleting the STOP. When CC /fç/was targeted, it was either kept or reduced to [f]. Besides reduction, there was one occurrence of deletion, /xɾ/→ [∅], and two occurrences of vowel epenthesis, /pɾ/→ [pVl] and /kl/→ [kVl], all involving [LIQUID].

Limitations and future research
The study contributes to the crosslinguistic pool of phonological assessment procedures by adding a battery for the Greek language. The data (and its analysis) of the single participant also add to the pool of cross-linguistic data. Future work should address limitations of this pilot investigation. First, there is a need for further support of the efficacy of the word list for comprehensive phonological assessment by administering it to more children. Second, a large cross-sectional study on typically developing children would permit test standardisation and the establishment of detailed quantitative norms lacking in the literature; results in PAL (1995) are mostly qualitative reporting acquisition by relating the proportion of children within an age group, rather than level of acquisition per se. Such norms would establish reliable guidelines for assessing delay/disorder. Future development of the tool should also include (a) testing the efficacy of the narrative to permit comparisons between spontaneous and word-elicited data; (b) child multi-/bilingual speakers of Greek; the proposed tool has the potential to evaluate second-language speakers of Greek, too; and (c) studies focusing on protracted phonological development and child speech disorder; these would highlight any modifications needed for a dependable phonological assessment battery by further evaluating the validity and efficacy of the proposed test.

Conclusions
The study has proposed a tool for the phonological assessment of developmental child Greek (PAel) in typical and clinical contexts, comprising of a word list and narrative. Being child appropriate, the test aimed to represent Greek phonotactics in terms of features, segments, sequences, syllables, word shapes, and stress patterns in as many/ variable contexts as possible, advancing the methodology of an existing but largely inaccessible battery. The proposed tool has also innovatively addressed adherence to the statistical properties of the language and dialectal variation in a Greek battery. Due to space limitations, only the word list was administered and analysed here to determine its efficacy and gauging potential. Analysis of a monolingual Greek girl's elicited data at age 4;8 demonstrates that this clinical test has the potential to comprehensively assess strengths and weaknesses during phonological development, also diagnosing phonological protraction. More children's data elicited using PAel will address limitations of this study by further elucidating the tool's strengths and weaknesses. Data analysis was performed within the constraint-based nonlinear theoretical framework illuminating the interplay of underlying hierarchical representations. Future goals comprise studies on more children to include multilingual and delayed/disordered populations, test standardisation, and establishment of norms on a quantitative basis to be used as dependable evaluation assessment and intervention of phonological delay/disorder.
Greek test (PAel) narrative The two-part narrative, Short and Sequel is shown in three parts: Greek orthography, phonetic IPA (adult surface), and English translation. Words in the screener/extended word lists appear in bold; the new types appear in italics, the remaining are function words.

Adult surface production in IPA
Phonetic variation, i.e. informal/running speech is in parenthesis; dialectal speech is shown in parenthesis preceded by an asterisk (*); The symbol #. marks the end of a sentence.

English Translation
Anna's birthday Once upon a time, under a pine tree, the biggest tree in the park, there was a house that looked like a manger. Τhere lived a girl with her old nanny. Her daddy and mammy had gone on a long trip out to sea. The child had a doll, beautiful like a fairy, but it was missing its ears. She carried it along with her in a basket, because it reminded her of the teacher she could see from her bed, outside the pane, coming every morning by train and leaving late in the evening. She was looking forward to growing up herself and, also, going to school. Still, she often liked to read her favorite book, a type of atlas. There was a flower on the front cover of the book, and several animals were shown inside, such as an ostrich, a frog, a tiger, a monkey, a turtle, and a huge dragon that played soccer and would even score a goal.
That day was the girl's birthday. Sticking her head out of the window, she saw that the night frost was melting like rain over the front-door step, as the golden sun was slowly breaking out. She first washed her face with soap, tidied her hair with the comb and then, after looking at her tongue in the mirror, she quickly glanced at her head and back. On the table among the dishes, there was already waiting for her a cup of hot milk and some tea, which was exactly what her achy throat needed not to be scratching. As she was having breakfast, she noticed that, next to her shoe on the carpet, there were some fruit peels and plenty of rice, and that they had taken a strange shape. They looked somewhat like a whistle and somewhat like a sharpener on grass. She spread her arm to pick them up when, suddenly, she heard the clock on the wall strike eight times, and the door keys turn. Then, she saw her nanny enter the room holding something huge, like a blue balloon. "What a big, round sack! What a beautiful bow! And, how many gifts are hidden inside! An entire treasure" said the girl. Although her parents were gone, they had not forgotten her, nor her birthday. "Thank you!" she exclaimed, beginning to unwrap the first package, wishing that a pair of inexpensive socks or a fish bowl were hidden in it. Nevertheless, she only found a grey truck, so real that it even had a gas pedal and tools.

SEQUEL
"Anna, leave the gifts next to the fireplace and finish your breakfast!" the nanny told her. Anna had put a thermometer in her mouth the night before to see if she had fever and, now, she wasn't so hungry to eat the toast, the egg, the yellow cheese, and the spinach pie that were stacked in front of her. She wasn't a fool to change her mind. Neither did she like to express her feelings by crying. On the contrary, she was dreaming of a big party inside daddy's study with colours, candy, a green lollipop, a wafer, a chocolate, and a lot of guests. It was her birthday, after all! Preparations come first, though. She used the broom to pick up the rice and fruit peels that now looked like a ghost on the floor(soil) and, then, gave her doll a bath in lukewarm water from the tap. She liked dressing the doll in a pink swimsuit, but today she chose a fuzzy dress with a black belt that matched its curly hair. Afterwards, she brought several decorations and toys out of the handicrafts bag and used a rope to hang them high over the light: a moon, a cloud, a kite, a hot air balloon, and a duck with spread-out wings. They all looked like they were going down a slide and were picture-perfect.
"We are ready!" she told her nanny, who had put on her reading glasses in the meantime and, sitting at the desk, was browsing the internet for an octopus-in-tomato or zucchini and cucumbers recipe. She wanted to prepare something special for Anna's birthday, besides meat and tzatziki. "Άnna, don't forget that Mr. Gregory is coming in a short while" the nanny told her. He was an old neighbour, a sixty-six year old, who lived in the adjacent building. He used to be grandpa's good friend, since they both got their degree from the same university. He had promised to bring Anna a ball and a magic wand that becomes a hammer when shaken by hand. In his youth, Mr. Gregory travelled a lot, like her parents, sometimes by boat and sometimes by ship. On and off, he would go to distant places with castles on top of the hills, where one could only reach riding a donkey. Anna enjoyed listening to the stories he told her, without being shy. She hastily looked outside the window to see if he was coming, but the street was empty. Only the smoke could be seen like a spinning top from the fireplace and the white fence in the yard, covered by something like fuzz that was falling from the tree. It was autumn.
"What is this noise?" she asked her nanny, but she had long gone out of the room. She turned the other way, and what a surprise! Out of the pages of her favorite book, there appeared all the animals mentioned before, and many more along with them, such as an ugly dog, an elephant, a lion, a kitten and a grasshopper. "Have you heard the news?" they were saying like they were children "we saw a dolphin come out of the lake! Does anyone know how to push heavy load so we can send it away to the sea? It's in danger from enemies here or it might drown." Anna always wanted to help others, and she immediately offered to lend her bike or nanny's car. The animals, however, at once sent a message to the rescue team and, afterwards, they all celebrated Anna's birthday together, like siblings. Believe it if you want: the fuzzy kitty ate the largest piece of the strawberry-almond cake! Anna had a wonderful time that day; so much so that it would stay in her memory. Like Anne of Green Gables, she knew how to make her day. She also knew that a little imagination can take one from alpha to omega.