This study examines the acquisition of the voicing contrast in German-Spanish bilingual children, on the basis of the acoustic measurement of Voice Onset Time (VOT). VOT in four bilingual children (aged 2;0–3;0) was measured and compared to VOT in three monolingual German children (aged 1;9–2;6), and to previous literature findings in Spanish. All measurements were based on word-initial stops extracted from naturalistic speech recordings. Results revealed that the bilingual children displayed three different patterns of VOT development: 1. Delay in the phonetic realization of voicing: two bilingual children did not acquire long lag stops in German during the testing period; 2. Transfer of voicing features: one child produced German voiced stops with lead voicing and Spanish voiceless stops with long lag voicing; and 3. No cross-language influence in the phonetic realization of voicing. The relevance of the findings for cross-linguistic interaction in bilingual phonetic/phonological development is discussed.

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This study examines the vowel systems of German-Spanish bilingual children in order to determine whether there is interaction between the two language systems. German has a larger vowel inventory than Spanish and also contains an opposition between long and short vowels. Given the differences in the vowel systems, which point to a more marked system in the case of German, two predictions are considered: (a) bilingual children will acquire the vowel length contrast in their German productions later than monolingual German-speaking children; and (b) bilingual children will acquire Spanish vowels similarly to monolingual children. In the German analysis, monosyllabic and disyllabic trochaic words were transcribed and acoustically analyzed. In the Spanish analysis, monosyllabic, disyllabic, and trisyllabic words were transcribed and a perceptual judgment was made as to whether the vowel production was a possible allophonic variant of the target vowel. The results confirmed both predictions. Bilingual children were delayed relaof the target vowel. The results confirmed both predictions. Bilingual children were delayed relative to monolingual children in the acquisition of the German vowel length contrast and displayed similar performance to monolingual children in the production of Spanish vowels. In the conclusion, the relevance of the findings to bilingual acquisition and to the acquisition of vowel length representation in children's grammars is discussed.

This study examines the influence of language-internal (frequency and complexity of linguistic properties), language-external (percent French input, socioeconomic status (SES), and gender), and lexical factors (size of total and French vocabulary) on the phonological production abilities of monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children, aged 2;6. Children participated in an object and picture naming task in which they produced words selected to test different phonological properties. The bilinguals’ first languages were coded in terms of the frequency and complexity of these phonological properties. Results indicated that bilinguals who spoke languages characterized by high frequency/complexity of codas and clusters had superior results in their coda and cluster accuracy in comparison to monolinguals. Bilinguals also had better coda and cluster accuracy scores than monolinguals. These findings provide evidence for cross-linguistic interaction in combination with a ‘general bilingual effect’. In addition, percent French exposure, SES, total vocabulary, and gender influenced phonological production.

This study examined the acoustic correlates of stress in children's productions of familiar words. Previous research has employed experimental words rather than familiar words to examine children's phonetic marking of stress, or has not adequately controlled for phonetic environment. Subjects in this study included 22 children, aged 18-30 months, and 6 adults. Fundamental frequency, duration, and amplitude measures were extracted from stressed and unstressed syllables in two types of comparisons: one that controlled phonetic environment and syllable position (interword) and one that measured the relative effects of stress within the same word (intraword). When the tokens were analyzed on the basis of target stress pattern, results revealed no differences between adults and children in their acoustic marking of stress. Listener judgments showed that approximately 30% of children's two-syllable productions were coded unreliably or were perceived as inaccurately stressed. Overall findings indicate that children control fundamental frequency, amplitude, and duration to derive perceptually identifiable stress contrasts in the majority of their productions but they are not completely adult-like in their marking of stress.