Phonological development of Spanish–Valencian bilingual children

Abstract

Purpose:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the phonological development of bilingual children in Spanish and Valencian to provide additional cross-linguistic evidence concerning the specificities of bilingual phonological acquisition compared with that of monolingual children. The comparison between Valencian/Spanish-bilingual and Spanish-monolingual children will focus on the production of codas and phonological processes.

Methodology:

Ten typically developing Valencian/Spanish bilingual and 10 typically developing Spanish-monolingual children aged between 2;9 and 5;6 (mean of 4;1) were assessed through a confrontation naming task.

Data and Analysis:

The subjects were classified according to being monolingual or bilingual and to the language in which the task was performed. The data analysis consisted of comparing between-groups and within-groups all the variables considered for this study through means and percentage correct.

Findings:

The major findings indicated a complex interrelation between language of input and monolingualism/bilingualism. Despite common trends in the development observed across groups, the bilingual children differed from the Spanish monolinguals in significant areas such as codas and phonological processes. There were also differences within the same bilingual sample between language performance in Valencian and Spanish.

Implications:

These results suggest that the frequency of distribution of certain phonological features in the input language will lead to a specific pattern of acquisition that is not standard across languages. Bilinguals appear to acquire two phonological systems that differ from monolingual children’s, suggesting that learning more than one language gives rise to an interaction between the two phonologies.

Originality:

The current study designed a very sophisticated confrontation naming task whose stimuli could be the initial draft of a phonological assessment. It also collected and analysed speech samples that constitute a valuable database for future research. Finally, it provides important additional evidence concerning bilingual acquisition, a topic that is crucial to a better understanding of the processes involved in language acquisition.