Phonology as human behavior

‘Non-Vocalization’ (N-V), is a newly described phonological error process. In N-V the hearing impaired actually articulate the phoneme but without producing a voice. It ends up looking as if it is produced but sounding as if it is omitted. N-V was found by video recording the speech of profoundly (‘speech readers’) and severely (‘hearers’) hearing impaired adults and analyzing 2065 phonological error processes (substitutions, omissions and N-V) by 24 criteria resulting in 49,560 data points. Results, which were discussed according to the theory of ‘Phonology as Human Behavior’ (PHB), indicated that: (a) each group invested more effort in processes that enhanced communication, (b) the more a process enhanced communication the more frequent its use, (c) the easier the elicitation task, the more frequent the use of the more difficult processes that enhanced communication (d) the more difficult the elicitation task, the more frequent the use of easier to produce processes that did not enhance communication, (e) the more a phonological feature enhanced communication the more it was favored even if it required greater effort.