The present study compared lexical and visual–orthographic processing in the spelling performance of 30 Cantonese Chinese children who are English as a second language (ESL) learners to that of 33 native English-speaking (L1) children. Chinese ESL children showed poorer performance in spelling to dictation of pseudowords than L1 children. The difference between real word and pseudoword spelling performances for ESL children was significantly greater than that for L1 children. Moreover, Chinese ESL children outperformed their L1 counterparts in a confrontation spelling task of orthographically legitimate and illegitimate letter strings. In line with their advantage in spelling visually presented materials, the difference between spelling performance on legitimate and illegitimate letter strings for the Chinese children was significantly smaller than that for the L1 children. These findings are discussed in terms of early transfer of L1 literacy skills in second language literacy acquisition and support for a multiroute reading model.

Three studies are reported that examine the development of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual children between kindergarten and Grade 2. In the first study, monolingual and bilingual children performed equally well on a complex task requiring phoneme substitution. The second study replicated these results and demonstrated a significant role for the language of literacy instruction. The third study extended the research by including two groups of bilingual children and a range of phonological awareness and reading tasks. Spanish–English bilinguals performed better than English-speaking monolinguals on a phoneme segmentation task, but Chinese–English bilinguals performed worse. Other measures of phonological awareness did not differ among the three groups. The results are discussed in terms of a limit on the effect that bilingualism exerts on metalinguistic development.

The abilities of second language speakers to discriminate the prosodic contrasts between idiomatic and literal meanings of ambiguous sentences were investigated using utterances previously shown to be reliably identified by acoustic cues. Four listener groups of varying proficiency, native speakers of American English, native speakers of non-American English, fluent nonnative speakers of English, and advanced students of English as a second language (ESL), judged whether single and paired, tape-recorded, literal and idiomatic utterances were spoken with intended idiomatic or literal meanings. Both native speaker groups performed significantly better than fluent nonnatives, while ESL students performed at chance. These results lend support to the hypothesis that abilities to discriminate subtle prosodic contrasts are learned later than other components of speech and language.

The literature to date suggests that the best predictor of early reading ability, phonological awareness, appears to be associated with the acquisition of letter-sound and vocabulary knowledge and with the development of well-defined phonological representations. It further suggests that at least some aspects of phonological awareness critically depend upon literacy exposure. In this study of 4- to 6-year-olds, we examine whether aspects of the home literacy environment are differentially associated with phonological awareness. Parental responses to a questionnaire about the home literacy environment are compared to children's awareness of rhyme and phonemes, as well as to their vocabulary, letter knowledge, and performance on measures of phonological strength (nonword repetition, rapid naming skill, phonological distinctness, and auditory discrimination). The results showed that a teaching focus in the home literacy environment and exposure to reading-related media are directly associated with phoneme awareness and indirectly associated via letter knowledge and vocabulary. Exposure to reading-related media and parents' active involvement in children's literature were also directly and indirectly linked with rhyme awareness skills via their association with letter and vocabulary knowledge.

How similar are the cognitive and linguistic profiles of those children who easily learn to read? How similar are the profiles of those children who have difficulty learning to read? Do the profiles of successful and less successful readers vary among children 5–10 years of age? These were the questions that guided this study. Six core profiles were identified on four fluid reasoning to comprehension knowledge constructs previously found to be both theoretically and empirically linked to children's reading acquisition: auditory processing, crystallized ability, processing speed, and short-term memory. Cluster analysis was used to develop this taxonomy and the six-cluster solution was supported through cross-validation. The internal and external validity of the resulting profiles was favorable, suggesting homogeneous within-cluster membership and clear separation among the six core profiles. A summary of the defining characteristics for each profile is provided. The performance of children comprising different profiles was investigated on four external reading outcomes. These comparisons were conducted for each of the six age groups comprising the sample (i.e., 5–10 years) to assess whether the importance of certain score configurations varied as a function of the reading tasks required of children learning to read and those who are already readers. Results indicated that certain profiles were associated with greater success on external measures of reading achievement than other profiles. Trends across ages and differences among age groups are described.

This study investigated the ability to discriminate the middle and low tone contrasts in Thai by two groups of native English (NE) speakers and a control group of native Thai (NT) speakers. The first group was comprised of NE speakers who had no prior experience with Thai, whereas subjects in the second group were experienced learners of Thai (EE). The variables under investigation were experience with Thai, discrimination of open versus closed syllables, and the interstimulus interval (ISI) of the presentation (500 vs 1500 ms). The results obtained indicated that the NT group obtained higher discrimination scores than the NE or EE groups, the EE group obtained higher discrimination scores than the NE group, all three groups of subjects found open syllables to be more difficult to discriminate than closed syllables, and subjects in the EE group obtained higher discrimination scores for open syllables in the shorter than the longer ISI condition.

Ten native Chinese-speaking children and adolescents who immigrated to the United States between ages 5 and 16 were studied for 3 years. The changes in their language preferences, language environments, and proficiency in English, their second language (L2), as well as Chinese, their first language (L1), were measured quantitatively and qualitatively. Participants with arrival ages of 9 or younger switched their language preference from L1 to L2 within the first year, were exposed to a significantly richer L2 than L1 environment, and became more proficient in L2 than in L1. The older participants maintained their preference for L1 across the 3 years, were exposed to a significantly richer L1 than L2 environment, and maintained L1 as the more proficient language. Interactions among L1 proficiency, peer interactions, social abilities, and cultural preferences jointly influenced the dominant language switch or maintenance processes.

This volume consists of 38 papers presented at the summer 2000 meeting of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, hosted by Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh. The scope of the collection is ambitious in many respects. All levels of linguistic analysis are covered, from pragmatics through to acoustics, although approximately two thirds of the papers deal with phonology and phonetics. The full range of ages is represented, from a paper by John Locke on the functions of infant babbling through to Jacqueline Guendozi and Nicole Muller's paper on repair strategies in the conversation of an elderly subject with Alzheimer disease. The majority of the papers consider developmental and acquired disorders, although a few consider normal and bilingual language development. Although English is the most frequently studied language, data from Arabic, Greek, Korean, Portugese, Putonghua, Swedish, and several other languages are also featured. The editors are justly proud of the international feel to the research, with contributors working on five continents.

The timing of this book is perfect. Optimality theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky, 1993) has been a popular framework for phonological exploration since its conception. This is not to say that it has been embraced by everyone working in the field. Rather, it has generated a great deal of intellectual debate and research, creating a sense of revitalization in the field of phonology.

Phonology is usually explained as the study of speech sounds and their patterns and functions in the lexical representation of speakers of languages (Kenstowicz, 1994; Spencer, 1996). Some years ago the question, “Where's phonology?” was raised by Macken (1992) in the context of the large concern with the phonetics of acquisition and the conception of phonological acquisition as acquisition of phonetics. This division between phonology and phonetics may be traced to the work of the Prague School of Trubetzkoy (1939/1969) and earlier. Macken proposed a relatively autonomous phonological component, with perceptual, articulatory, and phonological-based abstract rules and principles, to account for learners' lexical representation and suggested a hierarchy of prosodic words, segments, and features as the basis of phonological acquisition (Macken, 1979, 1992). Recent emphasis is on the interaction among phonology, phonetics, and psychology, and this integrative approach has implications for studying common crosslinguistic speech sound patterns (Ohala, 1999). Phonology is further seen as addressing the questions of rules and representations, which may apply to “compute the phonetic representation” within the framework of universal grammar (Kenstowicz, 1994, p. 10).