The phonological skills of Samoan speaking 4-year-olds

Abstract

To date there has been little research on the typical developmental patterns for children speaking Samoan. The research outlined in this paper serves to fill this gap by reporting on the phonological development of Samoan speaking children growing up in the English dominant language environment of Auckland New Zealand. In this study 20 children aged between 4;0 and 4;11 were assessed using a picture naming task that probed their knowledge of the Samoan phonemic inventory. The findings presented here give an indication of what children in their fifth year have as speech sounds in their phonetic inventory and the types of errors that they may still produce. These results demonstrate the similarities and differences that Samoan phonological development shares with other languages. In particular the differences that seem "atypical" when compared with studies on English are discussed. It is tentatively concluded that these differences may well be typical for Samoan speech acquisition given language specific factors and the bilingual context in which these children are growing up.

Consonant acquisition in the Malay language: A cross-sectional study of preschool aged malay children

“…According to Macleod et al (2011), the differences between the acquisition of French and that of English may be due to differences in the phonetic detail at the acoustic-motor level, perceptual salience, the consonant frequency and the stress systems. Ballard and Farao (2008) on the other hand, attributed the differences between Samoan and English to language specific factors and the bilingual context in which Samoan-speaking children grow up.…”

The influence of bilingualism on speech production: A systematic review

“…, , , Munro et al . ), Cantonese–English (Holm and Dodd ), Mandarin–English (Lin and Johnson ), Russian–English (Gildersleeve‐Neumann and Wright ), and Samoan–English (Ballard and Farao ). Studies provide a mixed, complex picture in terms of rate of acquisition of phoneme repertoires with some studies showing evidence of delayed acquisition of sounds in English (Bunta et al .…”

“…One frequent aim has to been to identify patterns of speech acquisition for typically developing bilingual populations and to examine whether patterns of acquisition differ to monolingual acquisition in one or both of the languages in terms of the rate and order of acquisition of phonemes and the presence of developmental error patterns. Bilingual-language populations where phoneme repertoires and developmental error patterns have been explored include Spanish-English (Brice et al 2009, Fabiano-Smith and Barlow 2010, Gildersleeve-Neumann et al 2008, Goldstein and Bunta 2010, Goldstein and Washington 2001, Goldstein et al 2005, Yavaş and Goldstein 2006, Maltese-English (Grech and Dodd 2008), Pakistani heritage languages-English (Holm et al 1999, Stow andPert 2006), Welsh-English (Ball et al 2001a, 2001b, 2006, Munro et al 2005, Cantonese-English (Holm and Dodd 2006), Mandarin-English (Lin and Johnson 2010), Russian-English (Gildersleeve-Neumann and Wright 2010), and Samoan-English (Ballard and Farao 2008). Studies provide a mixed, complex picture in terms of rate of acquisition of phoneme repertoires with some studies showing evidence of delayed acquisition of sounds in English (Bunta et al 2009, Dodd et al 1996, Fabiano-Smith and Goldstein 2010a, Gildersleeve-Neumann and Wright 2010, Gildersleeve-Neumann et al 2008, Holm and Dodd 2006, Stow and Pert 2006, others finding no difference in rate of acquisition , Fabiano-Smith and Barlow 2010, Gildersleeve-Neumann and Wright 2010, Goldstein et al 2005, Lin and Johnson 2010, and two studies observing accelerated acquisition compared with monolingual peers in English (Goldstein and Bunta 2010) and Maltese…”

“…Typically developing bilingual children tend to show a different pattern of development to their monolingual peers. Children who speak Pakistani heritage languages and English (Holm et al 1999), Cantonese-English (Dodd et al 1996, Holm and Dodd 2006, Russian-English (Gildersleeve-Neumann and Wright 2010), Spanish-English (Goldstein and Washington 2001), and Samoan-English (Ballard and Farao 2008) produced atypical developmental errors in one or both languages as well as delayed and more frequent use of some typical developmental errors. Authors often discussed these errors as evidence of interactions between the lexical structures and phonological characteristics of specific language pairs.…”

Tutorial: Speech Assessment for Multilingual Children Who Do Not Speak the Same Language(s) as the Speech-Language Pathologist

“…In other cultural groups, children may behave differently in the company of adults. For example, Samoan children use different registers (formal or colloquial) in different speaking situations, and these registers contain different consonants (Ballard & Farao, 2008).…”