The results from this study indicate that transfer, deceleration, and a possible variation of the acceleration hypothesis occur in bilingual phonological acquisition. Evidence was found for separation and interaction between the bilingual children's 2 languages (J. Paradis & F. Genesee, 1996).

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These exploratory findings indicate the need for longitudinal examination of EML categories with a larger cohort of children to observe similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual development.

The present study investigated phonological whole-word measures and consonant accuracy in bilingual and monolingual children to investigate how target approximations drive phonological acquisition. The study included eight bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking 3-year-olds and their monolingual peers (eight Spanish and eight American English). Phonological whole-word measures (pMLU and Proximity) and consonant accuracy (PCC) were calculated on elicited single words. Differences were found on each measure between bilinguals and monolinguals in English, but in Spanish, only the PCC displayed differences between bilinguals and monolinguals. Bilinguals displayed language separation on the pMLU and the PCC but not the Proximity, indicating structural phonological differences between the Spanish and English of bilinguals but commensurate target approximations. This suggests that maintaining a consistent level of phonological proximity to the target is an important factor in phonological acquisition. The measures and their relationships are also discussed.

This study investigates aspects of voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless bilabial and velar stops in monolingual and bilingual children. VOT poses a special challenge for bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking children because although this VOT distinction exists in both languages, the values differ for the same contrast across Spanish and English. Twenty-four 3-year-olds participated in this study (8 bilingual Spanish–English, 8 monolingual Spanish and 8 monolingual English). The VOT productions of /p/ and /k/ in syllable-initial stressed singleton position were compared across participants. Non-parametric statistical analyses were performed to examine differences (1) between monolinguals and bilinguals and (2) between English and Spanish. The main findings of the study were that monolingual and bilingual children generally differed on VOT in English, but not in Spanish. No statistically significant differences were found between the Spanish and the English VOT of the bilingual children, but the VOT values did differ significantly for monolingual Spanish-versus monolingual English-speaking participants. Our findings were interpreted in terms of Flege’s Speech Learning Model, finding possible evidence for equivalence classification.