Lexical Preferences in Greek-Learning Children with Cochlear Implants: A Retrospective Analysis of Sonority-Based and Prosodic Lexical Structures.

Sonority and its language-universal sonority-sequencing principle (SSP) define an important dimension of phonological grammar which aids in the segmentation of words into syllables (Clements in Pap Lab Phonol 1:283-333, 1990). Studies have yielded contradictory findings on sonority and SSP phonotactics in lexical perception of speech by children with cochlear implants (CI) (Hamza et al. in Ear Hear 39(5):992-1007, 2018; Ear Hear 41(6):1715-1731, 2020). The present study aimed to investigate whether sonority-based and prosodic word aspects guide the lexical preferences of children with CI in comparison with two groups of normally-hearing οnes, who were matched based on chronological and hearing age to children with CI, respectively. A retrospective analysis of real words was undertaken, obtained from a-CYLEX, a parent-reporting tool of receptive and expressive vocabulary which was completed for 17 children with CI, aged from 21 to 71 months (Oktapoti et al. in Deaf Educ Int 18(1):3-12, 2016). The data for each word was re-coded into sonorous-loaded, nonsonorous-loaded and neutral words, and also into five word categories based on number of syllables. Metrical values were obtained following normalization of data. Results indicated similar trends in sonority and prosodic word categories based on normalized scores, in children with CI and NH peers, for both receptive and expressive vocabulary. Yet, differences in vocabulary size among the three groups were noted.