Verificação da intervenção do fonoaudiólogo no processo variável de apagamento do fonema /r/ por crianças com alteração de fala na região metropolitana de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This paper analized the relevance of language variation in the feedback of the speech evaluation of six to ten-year-old children from Belo Horizonte and surroundings. The phenomenon described in this study is the one of variation/ cancellation of the final and medial /R/ in nouns and verbs, through studies carried out in the scope of sociolinguistics. The research collected data about the repercussion of such phenomenon among professional speech therapists. The delection of the final and medial /R/ gets the attention of speech therapists; however, there is very little if any recognition of the inherent variation of this phonemenon. The aim of this study is to contribute to the improvement of speech assessment processes. Once not treating sociolinguistic variants as pathologies, such assessment processes will contribute to the patients and their families change of attitude as well as the reduction of treatment length. Research on variation characteristics has been carried out: final and medial /R/ delection, in data collected for the present study (childrens speech samples and evaluations) as well as in studies made within the areas of language variation and change, historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology and speech therapy. The different blocks of data were submitted to an analysis guided by the Variation Theory according to WEINREICH, LABOV & HERZOG (1968) and LABOV (1972, 1984). It has been observed that the evaluation proposed by the speech therapists is tributary to the position of the phonemenon (medial or final) and to the stage in which each one of the processes is; to the word class in which the variation process takes place (nouns and verbs); to the type of lexical item in which the erasure phenomenon happens; and the linguistic profile of the individual in which the analyzed variants are pictured.