Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-19T07:10:15.345Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Speech rhythm of monolingual and bilingual children at age 2;6: Cantonese and English*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2012

PEGGY P. K. MOK
PEGGY P. K. MOK*
Affiliation:
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, Leung Kau Kui Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Previous studies have showed that at age 3;0, monolingual children acquiring rhythmically different languages display distinct rhythmic patterns while the speech rhythm patterns of the languages of bilingual children are more similar. It is unclear whether the same observations can be found for younger children, at 2;6. This study compared five Cantonese–English simultaneous bilingual children with five monolingual children in each language using both rhythmic metrics and qualitative data on syllable structure complexity and lexical stress. Results show that while the speech rhythms of monolingual children are different at 2;6, the rhythmic patterns of bilingual children are less distinct.

Keywords

speech rhythmbilingual acquisitionCantoneseEnglish
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 693 - 703
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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

*

The author would like to thank the parents of several monolingual children for the monolingual data. She thanks the participants of the International Child Phonology Conference 2011 at York for their helpful suggestions. She also thanks the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and Donald White for editing the manuscript.

References

Allen, G., & Hawkins, S. (1980). Phonological rhythm: definition and development. In Yeni-Komshian, G., Kavanagh, J. & Ferguson, C. (eds.), Child phonology (vol. 1): Production, pp. 227–256. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arvaniti, A. (2009). Rhythm, timing and the timing of rhythm. Phonetica, 66, 46–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). Early language differentiation in bilingual infants. In Cenoz, J. & Genesee, F. (eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition, pp. 71–93. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bunta, F., & Ingram, D. (2007). The acquisition of speech rhythm by bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking 4- and 5-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50 (4), 999–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cumming, R. (2009). The interdependence of tonal and durational cues in the perception of rhythmic groups. Phonetica, 67, 219–242.Google Scholar
Cutler, A., & Carter, D. M. (1987). The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech and Language, 2, 133–142.Google Scholar
Dauer, R. M. (1983). Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 51–62.Google Scholar
Dellwo, V. (2006). Rhythm and speech rate: A variation coefficient for ∆C. In Karnowski, P. & Szigeti, I. (eds.), Language and language-processing, pp. 231–241. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Flege, J. (1991). Age of learning affects the authenticity of voice-onset time (VOT) in stop consonants produced in a second language. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89, 395–411.Google Scholar
Fletcher, P., Leung, S. C. S., Stokes, S. F., & Weizman, Z. O. (2000). Cantonese preschool language development: A guide. Hong Kong: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences.Google Scholar
Forrester, M. (2002). Appropriating cultural conceptions of childhood: Participation in conversation. Childhood, 9, 255–278.Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J. (1995). Language differentiation in early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 22, 611–631.Google Scholar
Grabe, E., & Low, E. L. (2002). Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis. In Gussenhoven, C. & Warner, N. (eds.), Laboratory phonology VII, pp. 515–546. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36, 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houston, D. (2011). Infant speech perception. In Seewald, R. & Tharpe, A. M. (eds.), Comprehensive handbook of pediatric audiology, pp. 47–62. San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.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
Kehoe, M., Lleó, C., & Rakow, M. (2011). Speech rhythm in the pronunciation of German and Spanish monolingual and German–Spanish bilingual 3-year-olds. Linguistische Berichte, 227, 323–352.Google Scholar
Laeufer, C. (1996). The acquisition of a complex phonological contrast: Voice timing patterns of English initial stops by native French speakers. Phonetica, 53, 86–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lleó, C., & Kehoe, M. (2002). On the interaction of phonological systems in child bilinugal acquisition. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 233–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lleó, C., Rakow, M., & Kehoe, M. (2007). Acquiring rhythmically different languages in a bilingual context. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 16), Saarbrueken, Germany, pp. 1545–1548.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
Mok, P. P. K. (2011). The acquisition of speech rhythm by three-year-old bilingual and monolingual children: Cantonese and English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 458–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nazzi, T., Bertoncini, J., & Mehler, J. (1998). Language discrimination by newborns: towards an understanding of the role of rhythm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 756–766.Google Scholar
Nazzi, T., Jusczyk, P. W., & Johnson, E. K. (2000). Language discrimination by English-learning 5-month-olds: Effects of rhythm and familiarity. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 1–19.Google Scholar
Packard, J. L. (2000). The morphology of Chinese: A linguistic and cognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2001). Do bilingual two-year-olds have separate phonological systems? The International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 19–38.Google Scholar
Payne, E., Post, B., Astruc, L., Prieto, P., & Vanrell, M. M. (2012). Measuring child rhythm. Language and Speech, 55, 203–229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73, 265–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roach, P. (1982). On the distinction between stress-timed languages and syllable-timed languages. In Crystal, D. (ed.), Linguistic controversies: Essays in honour of F. R. Palmer, pp. 73–79. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Treiman, R., & Danis, C. (1988). Syllabification of intervocalic consonants. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 87–104.Google Scholar
Treiman, R., & Zukowski, A. (1990). Toward an understanding of English syllabification. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 66–85.Google Scholar
Vihman, M., DePaolis, R., & Davis, L. (1998). Is there a ‘trochaic bias’ in early word learning? Evidence from infant production in English and French. Child Development, 1998, 935–949.Google Scholar
Vihman, M., Nakai, S., & DePaolis, R. (2006). Getting the rhythm right: A cross-linguistic study of segmental duration in babbling and first words. In Goldstein, L., Whalen, D. H. & Best, C. T. (eds.), Laboratory phonology 8, pp. 343–368. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
White, D., & Mok, P. P. K. (2011). A case study of speech rhythm acquisition in a Cantonese–English bilingual child. Presented at the International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), Montreal.Google Scholar
Whitworth, N. (2002). Speech rhythm production in three German–English bilingual families. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 9, 175–205.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2007). The bilingual child: Early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar