Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:08:03.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prosodic structures and templates in bilingual phonological development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2015

MARILYN VIHMAN
MARILYN VIHMAN*
Affiliation:
University of York
*
Address for correspondence: Marilyn Vihman, Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bilingual children have long been held to have ‘separate linguistic systems’ from the start (e.g., Meisel, 2001). This paper challenges that assumption with data from five bilingual children's first 100 words. Whereas the prosodic structures represented by a child's words may or may not be differentiated by language, emergent phonological templates are not, the same patterns being deployed as more complex adult word forms are targeted in each language. Reliance on common (idiosyncratic) phonological templates for the two languages is ascribed to children's experience with their own voice (in production) as well as with others’ speech. Both experimental studies and spontaneous cross-linguistic speech errors in adults and older children are cited to support the view that, for a bilingual, unconscious processing draws on both languages throughout the lifespan, which suggests that the emphasis on ‘separate systems’ (from the start or thereafter) may be misconceived.

Keywords

bilingual childrenexemplar modelitem learningphonological templateprosodic structure
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 69 - 88
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I thank Virve-Anneli Vihman for permission to use some of her unpublished diary data and Margaret Deuchar for providing supplementary data on her daughter's early words; I am also grateful to both of them as well as to my colleagues Rory DePaolis, Paul Foulkes, Ghada Khattab, Marta Szreder and especially Sophie Wauquier for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Márton Sóskuthy kindly helped with the statistical analysis.

References

Abutalebi, J., Cappa, S. F., & Perani, D. (2005). What can functional neuroimaging tell us about the bilingual brain? In Kroll, J. F. & DeGroot, A. M. B. (eds.), Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches, pp. 497–515. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2000). The ontogeny of phonological categories and the primacy of lexical learning in linguistic development. Child Development, 71, 240–249.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1977). Natural phonological processes at the one-word stage. Lingua, 43, 1–21.Google Scholar
Bhaya Nair, R. (1991). Monosyllabic English or disyllabic Hindi? Indian Linguistics, 52, 51–90.Google Scholar
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). Native-language recognition abilities in 4-month-old infants from monolingual and bilingual environments. Cognition, 65, 33–69.Google Scholar
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Galles, N. (2001). Early language differentiation in bilingual infants. In Cenoz, J. & Genesee, F. (eds.), Trends in Bilingual Acquisition, pp. 70–93. (TiLAR, 1.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brulard, I., & Carr, P. (2003). French-English bilingual acquisition of phonology: One production system or two? International Journal of Bilingualism, 7, 177–202.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2001). Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language, 82, 711–733.Google Scholar
Campos, J. J., Anderson, D. I., Barbu-Roth, M. A., Hubbard, E. M., Hertenstein, M. J., & Witherington, D. (2000). Travel broadens the mind. Infancy, 1, 149–219.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeHouwer, A. (2005). Early bilingual acquisition. In Kroll, J. F. & DeGroot, A. M. B., (eds.), Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches, pp. 30–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1996). The prosodic structure of early words. In Morgan, J. L. & Demuth, K. (eds.), Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition, pp. 171–184. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (2006). Special issue: Crosslinguistic perspectives on the development of prosodic words. Language and Speech, 49, 129–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DePaolis, R., Vihman, M. M., & Keren-Portnoy, T. (2011). Do production patterns influence the processing of speech in prelinguistic infants? Infant Behavior and Development, 34, 590–601.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DePaolis, R., Vihman, M. M., & Nakai, S. (2013). The influence of babbling patterns on the processing of speech. Infant Behavior and Development, 36, 642–649.Google Scholar
Deuchar, M., & Clark, A. (1996). Early bilingual acquisition of the voicing contrast in English and Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 24, 351–365.Google Scholar
Deuchar, M., & Quay, S. (2000). Bilingual acquisition: Theoretical implications of a case study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elbers, L., & Wijnen, F. (1992). Effort, production skill, and language learning. In Ferguson, C. A., Menn, L., & Stoel-Gammon, C. (eds.), Phonological Development: Models, Research, Implications, pp. 337–368. Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, N. C. (2005). At the interface: Dynamic interactions of explicit and implicit language knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 305–352.Google Scholar
Feldman, N. H., Griffiths, T. L., & Morgan, J. L. (2009). Learning phonetic categories by learning a lexicon. In Taatgen, N. A. & van, H. Rijn (eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 2208–2213. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A., & Farwell, C. B. (1975). Words and sounds in early language acquisition. Language, 51, 419–439. Reprinted in Vihman & Keren-Portnoy (2013), pp. 93–132.Google Scholar
Fikkert, P., & Levelt, C. (2008). How does place fall into place? The lexicon and emergent constraints in children's developing grammars. In Avery, P., Dresher, E., & Rice, K. (eds.), Contrast in Phonology: Theory, perception, acquisition, pp. 231–270. Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, P. (2010). Exploring social-indexical knowledge: A long past but a short history. Laboratory Phonology, 1, 5–39.Google Scholar
Foulkes, P., & Hay, J. (in press). The emergence of sociophonetic structure. In MacWhinney, B. & O’Grady, W. (eds.), Handbook of Language Emergence. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Genesee, F. (1989). Early bilingual development: One language or two? Journal of Child Language, 16, 161–179.Google Scholar
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J. (2013) Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 515–530. DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2013.796377 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houston, D. M., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2000). The role of talker-specific information in word segmentation by infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1570–1582.Google Scholar
Houston, D. M., & Jusczyk, P. W. (2003). Infants’ long-term memory for the sound patterns of words and voices. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 1143–1154.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1981). The emerging phonological system of an Italian-English bilingual child. Journal of Italian Linguistics, 2, 95–113.Google Scholar
Johnson, K. A. (1997). Speech perception without speaker normalization: An exemplar model. In Johnson, K. & Mullenix, J. W. (eds.), Talker Variability in Speech Processing, pp. 145–165. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, K. A. (2007). Decisions and mechanisms in exemplar-based phonology. In Solé, M-J., Beddor, P. S. & Ohala, M. (eds.), Experimental Approaches to Phonology, pp. 25–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kehoe, M. (2002). Developing vowel systems as a window to bilingual phonology. International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 315–334.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M., Lleó, C., & Rakow, M. (2004). Voice Onset Time in bilingual German-Spanish children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 71–88.Google Scholar
Keren-Portnoy, T., Majorano, M., & Vihman, M. M. (2009). From phonetics to phonology: The emergence of first words in Italian. Journal of Child Language, 36, 235–267.Google Scholar
Keren-Portnoy, T., Vihman, M. M., DePaolis, R., Whitaker, C., & Williams, N. A. (2010). The role of vocal practice in constructing phonological working memory. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 1280–1293.Google Scholar
Khattab, G. (2007). Variation in vowel production by English-Arabic bilinguals. In Cole, J. & Hualde, J. I. (eds.), Phonological development and disorders: A cross-linguistic perspective, pp. 383–40. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Khattab, G. (2013). Phonetic convergence and divergence strategies in English-Arabic bilingual children. Linguistics, 51, 439–472.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 119–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & DeGroot, A. M. B., eds. (2005). Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 831–843.Google Scholar
Leopold, W. F. (1939). Speech Development of a Bilingual Child, 1: Vocabulary growth in the first two years. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Lleó, C. (2002). The role of markedness in the acquisition of complex prosodic structures by German-Spanish bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 233–237.Google Scholar
Lleó, C., & Kehoe, M. (2002). Forward. International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 233–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macken, M. A. (1978). Permitted complexity in phonological development: One child's acquisition of Spanish consonants. Lingua, 44, 219–253.Google Scholar
Macken, M. A. (1979). Developmental reorganization of phonology: A hierarchy of basic units of acquisition. Lingua, 49, 11–49. Reprinted in Vihman & Keren-Portnoy (2013), pp. 133–167.Google Scholar
Mägiste, E. (1979). The competing language systems of the multilingual. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 79–89.Google Scholar
Majorano, M., Vihman, M. M. & DePaolis, R. A. (2014). The relationship between infants’ production experience and their processing of speech. Language Learning and Development, 10, 179–204.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., & Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition, 29, 143–178.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2001). The simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: Early differentiation and subsequent development of grammars. In Cenoz, J. & Genesee, F. (eds.), Trends in Bilingual Acquisition, pp. 11–41. (TiLAR, 1.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Menn, L., Schmidt, E. & Nicholas, B. (2009). Conspiracy and sabotage in the acquisition of phonology: Dense data undermine existing theories, provide scaffolding for a new one. Language Sciences, 31, 285–304.Google Scholar
Menn, L., Schmidt, E., & Nicholas, B. (2013). Challenges to theories, charges to a model: The Linked-Attractor model of phonological development. In Vihman, M. M. & Keren-Portnoy, T. (eds.), The Emergence of Phonology: Whole word approaches, cross-linguistic evidence, pp. 460–502. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Menn, L., & Vihman, M. M. (2011). Features in child phonology: inherent, emergent, or artefacts of analysis? In Clements, N. & Ridouane, R. (eds.), Where Do Phonological Features Come From? Cognitive, physical and developmental bases of distinctive speech categories, pp. 261–301. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Moskowitz, A. (1970). The acquisition of phonology. Working paper no. 34, Language Behavior Research Laboratory. University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Munson, B., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2012). Phonological representation in language acquisition: Climbing the ladder of abstraction. In Cohn, A. C., Fougeron, C. & Huffman, M. K. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Laboratory Phonology, pp. 288–309. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2001). Do bilingual two-year-olds have separate phonological systems? International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 19–38.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 1–25.Google Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S., & Oller, D. K. (1995). Cross-language synonyms in the lexicons of bilingual infants. Journal of Child Language, 22, 345–368.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pierrehumbert, J. (2003a). Phonetic diversity, statistical learning, and acquisition of phonology. Language and Speech, 46, 115–154.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J. (2003b). Probabilistic phonology: Discrimination and robustness. In Bod, R., Hay, J. B. & Jannedy, S. (eds.), Probabilistic Linguistics, pp. 177–228. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Priestly, T. M. S. (1977). One idiosyncratic strategy in the aquisition of phonology. Journal of Child Language, 4, 45–66. Reprinted in Vihman & Keren-Portnoy (2013), pp. 217–237.Google Scholar
Quay, S. (1993). Language choice in early bilingual development. Unpublished thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Savinainen-Makkonen, T. (2000). Word-initial consonant omissions – a developmental process in children learning Finnish. First Language, 20, 161–185.Google Scholar
Schnitzer, M. L., & Krasinski, E. (1994). The development of segmental phonological production in a bilingual child. Journal of Child Language, 21, 585–622.Google Scholar
Schnitzer, M. L., & Krasinski, E. (1996). The development of segmental phonological production in a bilingual child: A contrasting second case. Journal of Child Language, 23, 547–571.Google Scholar
Schoonbaert, S., Duyk, W., Brysbaert, M., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2009). Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings. Memory & Cognition, 37, 569–586.Google Scholar
Singh, L., Morgan, J. L., & White, K. S. (2004). Preference and processing: The role of speech affect in early spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 173–189.Google Scholar
Smith, N. V. (1973). The Acquisition of Phonology: A case study. Cambridge: The University Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, J. P., Thomas, M. S. C., & McClelland, J. L. (2009). Toward a unified theory of development: Connectionism and dynamic systems theory re-considered. New York: Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swingley, D. (2009). Contributions of infant word learning to language development. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 364, 3617–3632.Google Scholar
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Thierry, G., & Wu, Y-J. (2007). Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign-language comprehension. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 12530–12535.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (1981). Phonology and the development of the lexicon: Evidence from children's errors. Journal of Child Language, 8, 239–264.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (1982). The acquisition of morphology by a bilingual child: A whole-word approach. Applied Psycholinguistics, 3, 141–160.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (1985). Language differentiation by the bilingual infant. Journal of Child Language, 12, 297–324.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (2002). Getting started without a system: From phonetics to phonology in bilingual development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 239–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (2014). Phonological Development: The first two years. (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (in press). Perception and production in phonological development. In MacWhinney, B. & O’Grady, W. (eds.), Handbook of Language Emergence. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M., & Croft, W. (2007). Phonological development: Toward a ‘radical’ templatic phonology. Linguistics, 45, 683–725. Reprinted in Vihman & Keren-Portnoy (2013), pp. 17–57.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M., DePaolis, R. A., & Keren-Portnoy, T. (in press). A dynamic systems approach to babbling and words. In Bavin, E. (ed.), Handbook of Child Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M., & Keren-Portnoy, T., eds. (2013). The Emergence of Phonology: Whole word approaches, cross-linguistic evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M., & Velleman, S. L. (2000). The construction of a first phonology. Phonetica, 57, 255–266.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M., & Vihman, V-A. (2011). From first words to segments: A case study in phonological development. In Arnon, I. & Clark, E. V., eds., Experience, Variation, and Generalization: Learning a first language, pp. 109–133. (TiLAR 7.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Volterra, V., & Taeschner, T. (1978). The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, 5, 311–326.Google Scholar
Waterson, N. (1971). Child phonology: A prosodic view. Journal of Linguistics, 7, 179–211. Reprinted in Vihman & Keren-Portnoy (2013, pp. 61–92).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedel, A. B. (2007). Feedback and regularity in the lexicon. Phonology, 24, 147–185.Google Scholar
Wolfram, W., & Schilling-Estes, N. (2006). American English. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar