Elena Babatsouli (ed.) (2020). On under-reported monolingual child phonology. (Communication Disorders across Languages 19.) Bristol & Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. Pp. xxi + 453.

Abstract

This edited volume is a collection of papers on phonological development and language disorders, compiled in honour of David Ingram in recognition of his contribution to these fields of study. There is also some initial focus on the International Child Phonology Conference (ICPC), which for about forty years has served as the conference for the child phonology research community. The book is the 19th volume in the ‘Communication Disorders across Languages’ series. The cross-linguistic focus of the volume as well as of the series as a whole serves the important goal of making less well-known research on (and in) languages other than English accessible to an international audience. In a nutshell, the papers in the volume report on empirical studies of child speech development (typical and impaired) in various languages, taking place in a monolingual environment. Collectively, they provide valuable information on the acquisition of selected aspects of cross-linguistic (segmental and prosodic) structure, available assessment tools and current intervention practice. The studies differ in their theoretical and clinical relevance, with some contributing to both domains. They also differ in scope, ranging from small-scale preliminary studies, based on novel or already existing corpora, to large-scale normative studies, the latter being essential from the point of view of constructing screening tests to allow for early intervention in children with speech delays. The languages under investigation include Dutch, American English, French, Greek, Israeli Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Mexican Spanish and Valley Zapotec. In what follows, I present the structure of the volume and the focus of each of the chapters, with the aim of highlighting potential points of interest for phonologists working on various aspects of child language acquisition. Such short highlights cannot reflect the (rather likeable) loquacity of many chapters, which give generous background not only on the acquisitional issues considered, but also on the corresponding languages and cultures. A few notes on the presentation of Polish, my native language, appear in a separate section towards the end of this review.