Phonological assessment and analysis tools for Tagalog: Preliminary development

Information and assessment tools concerning Tagalog phonological development are minimally available. The current study thus sets out to develop elicitation and analysis tools for Tagalog. A picture elicitation task was designed with a warm-up, screener and two extension lists, one with more complex and one with simpler words. A nonlinear phonological analysis form was adapted from English (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 2000) to capture key characteristics of Tagalog. The tools were piloted on a primarily Tagalog-speaking 4-year-old boy living in a Canadian-English-speaking environment. The data provided initial guidance for revision of the elicitation tool (available at phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca). The analysis provides preliminary observations about possible expectations for primarily Tagalog-speaking 4-year-olds in English-speaking environments: Lack of mastery for tap/trill ‘r’, and minor mismatches for vowels, /l/, /h/ and word stress. Further research is required in order to develop the tool into a norm-referenced instrument for Tagalog in both monolingual and multilingual environments.