Phonological Acquisition of Indonesian in Down Syndrome Children at SLB E Negeri Pembina Tingkat Provinsi Sumatera Utara, Medan (Psycholinguistic Studies)

Abstract

Language acquisition is a process that develops in the brain while acquiring language and a communication tool that can convey meaning. Language acquisition can be phonological, morphological, syntactic, or semantic. In this study, the authors focused on phonological acquisition. Phonological acquisition relates to the speech sounds produced by children when pronouncing certain sounds. The sounds in question are sounds produced by human articulation. The phonological acquisition in this paper focuses on vowel and consonant sounds in Indonesian. The author focuses his writing on the acquisition of Indonesian phonology in down syndrome children. This writing aims to find out what vowel sounds and consonants can be produced by down syndrome children in SLB E Negeri Pembina Tingkat Provinsi Sumatera Utara, Medan. There’re five participants with down syndrome children as research subjects. This study used Blumstein and Kohn’s theory of speech sound change and Roman Jacobson's theory.  The method of data collection is listened and technique is the tapping. This method analyses vowel and consonant speech sounds obtained by participants at words' beginning, middle, and end. The first result obtained from the study was that of the five participants there was a change in speech sounds. Changes in speech sounds are sound completion (Omission) and sound addition (Substitution). From the data on changes in speech sounds, it was obtained that down syndrome children can already produce several vowels in Indonesian, namely [i],[u],[e],[o],and[a]. The consonants that can be obtained are [b],[p],[t],[d],[l],[k],[s],[m],[n],[d],[t], and [c].