PURPOSE: to investigate the relationship of the types of repair strategies used in the liquid consonants of Brazilian Portuguese according to age and severity of the phonological disorders. METHODS: the study included 120 children, 41 females and 79 males, aged between four and eight years and eleven months. All children used at least one of the strategies involving some of the liquid consonants (/l/, /<img src="/img/revistas/rcefac/2010nahead/a44-10car01.jpg" align="absmiddle" />/, /r/, /R/) - replacement, semi-vocalization and / or omissions - using 40% or more of the strategy in the phonological system. Data were extracted from the phonological assessments of children who had not received phonological therapy, and the severity of phonological disorders was determined by the Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (PCC-R). Data were statistically analyzed by using Fisher's Exact Test, with p <0.05. RESULTS: there was no difference as for the use of repair strategies for the liquid consonants based on age. However, statistical differences were observed when comparing the severity of the deviation and repair strategies of liquid consonants for some of the studied segments and strategies. CONCLUSION: we concluded that the extra-linguistic variable and age are not directly related to the use of repair strategies for the liquid consonants in phonological disorders. Nonetheless, we are aware on the influence of severity concerning phonological disorders on the use of these strategies, which varies according to the target segment.
Speech Disorders; Speech-Language Pathology; Child Language; Speech
