VOT Production in English and Arabic Bilingual and Monolingual Children

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an instrumental study of Voice Onset Time (VOT) production in 3 English-Arabic bilingual children and 3 monolingual controls from each language. The subjects were all aged between 5 and 10, and the recordings were made in England and Lebanon. The aim was to find out whether bilinguals acquire separate VOT patterns for each language and whether these patterns are parallel to the monolingual ones. Results showed that the 3 bilinguals did acquire distinct VOT patterns for each language, but the patterns did not always resemble monolingual ones. The main affected feature was voicing lead in Arabic, as it was often replaced with short lag. However, similar behaviour was found in the young monolingual children, which helped interpret some of the bilingual patterns in terms of normal developmental features rather than resorting to the usual explanations based on 'language interference'. Results from both monolinguals and bilinguals showed that the differences between the two languages are finer than the three VOT categories suggest, particularly with respect to short lag. Finally developmental changes for two of the bilingual subjects over a period of 18 months revealed the importance of an interrelation between input and age for the acquisition of two independent phonological systems.

Cross-linguistic interaction in trilingual phonological development: the role of the input in the acquisition of the voicing contrast

“…Other studies suggest that the voicing contrast might not be adult-like in voicing languages until at least the elementary school years. Thus, in Gandour et al (1986) only the seven-year-old children, but not the five-year-old, managed to produce Thai voiced stops with target-like prevoicing patterns, and in Khattab (2000) only the ten-year old child, but not the five-year old and the seven-year-old, exhibited consistent prevoicing of Arabic voiced stops.…”

“…The voicing contrast is generally acquired later in languages that distinguish lead voice and short-lag categories (Allen, 1985;Bortoloni et al, 1995;Gandour, Petty, Dardarananda, Dechongkit & Munkgoen, 1986;Khattab, 2000, Macken & Barton, 1980. Bortoloni et al (1995), for instance, found that at age 1;9 only three out of 14 Italian-learning children managed to produce a significant difference in voicing at each place of articulation.…”

“…A number of studies have examined VOT production in bilingual children (e.g., Deuchar & Clark, 1996;Fabiano-Smith & Bunta, 2012;Heselwood & McChrystal, 2000;Kehoe et al, 2004;Khattab, 2000;Mack, 1990;Simon, 2010;Yavaş, 2002). These studies revealed that in addition to developmental factors, children"s VOT patterns are affected by cross-linguistic interactions.…”

“…Note that while cross-language transfer is often invoked to explain these findings, it remains a matter of debate whether such non-target-like patterns can always be attributed to cross-linguistic effects. Khattab (2000), for instance, found that not only Arabic-English bilinguals, aged 5;0 to 10;0, but also agematched Arabic monolinguals used prevoicing inconsistently in voiced Arabic stops.…”

“…We chose comparatively old children for this study since VOT acquisition is known to be a protracted process, even in monolinguals (cf. Gandour et al, 1986;Khattab, 2000), and little is known about more advanced stages of acquisition.…”