Phonological Development and Phonological Processes in the Speech of an English-Arabic Bilin-gual Child

Hana Asaad Daana

Abstract


This research traces the phonological development and the phonological processes in the speech of a bilingual child acquiring Jordanian Arabic and English. This trace is carried out through a thorough description of the phonological development of segments in Jordanian Arabic and English. It is also carried out through discussing the phonological processes resorted to by the child in order to simplify the production of segments in both languages. This study is the first of its kind to compare and contrast phonological processes in the speech of a bilingual child whose two first languages descend from two different linguistic families. The study also scrutinizes evidence of any influence of one language over the other. Evidence for either the Separate Development Hypothesis or the Fusion Hypothesis is also investigated. The data used in this paper are collected by the author from her own child acquiring Arabic and English simultaneously between the ages of 7 and 20 months. The child’s sound segment development showed consistency with universal trends. Phonological processes such as regressive and progressive assimilation, substitution and metathesis were found in the child’s production of English and Arabic sounds. The study provides limited evidence for the occurrence of interlanguage interference. On the other hand, the study provides strong supportive evidence for the Separate Development Hypothesis.

Keywords


Phonological Development, Simultaneous Bilingualism, Phonological Processes, Separate Development Hypothesis, Fusion Hypothesis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adnyani, N. and Pastika (2016). Phonological Development in the Early Speech of an Indonesian-German Bilingual Child. Research in Linguistics. 1 (3), 329-350. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2017.050504.

Al-Amayreh, M. (1994). A Normative Study of the Acquisition of Consonant Sounds in Arabic. PhD Dissertation, University of Florida.

Celce-Murica, M. (1978). The Simultaneous Acquisition of English and French in a two-year-Old Child. In E. Hatch (ed.). Second Language Acquisition: A Book of Readings. 38-53. Roeley. MA: Newbury House.

Crystal, D. (2003). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackwell Publication LTD: United Kingdom. DOI: 10.1108/09504120910969041.

Daana, H. (2017a). Phonological Development of an Arabic English Bilingual Child during the One-Word Stage. Linguistics and Literature Studies. 5 (5), 354-364. DOI: 10.13189/lls.2017.050504.

Daana, H. (2017b). The Development of Coda Consonants in the Speech of a Bilingual Child: A Case Study. International Journal of Linguistics. 9 (5), 149-172. DOI: 10,5296/ijl.v9i5.11747.

Daana, H. (2009). The Development of Consonant Clusters, Stress and Plural Nouns in Jordanian Arabic Child Language. PhD Dissertation. University of Essex: UK.

Daana, H & Khrais, S. (2018). The Acquisition of English and Arabic Onset Clusters: A Case Study. English Linguistics Research. 7 (1), 13-33. DOI: 10.5430/elr.v7n1p13.

De Houwer, A. (1990). Bilingual First Language Acquisition. Clevedon/Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.

Deuchar, M, and S. Quay. (1998). One vs. Two Systems in Early Bilingual Syntax: Two Versions of the Question. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 13, 231-243. DOI: 10.1017/S1366728998000376.

Deuchar, M and Clark, A. (1996). Early Bilingual Acquisition of the Voicing Contrast in English and Spanish. Journal of Phonetics. 24 (3), 351-365. http://doi. Org/10.1006/jpho.1996.0019.

Genesee, F. (2001). Bilingual First Language Acquisition: Exploring the Limits of the Language Faculty. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 153-170.

Genesee, F. (1989). Early Bilingual Development: One Language or Two? Journal of Child Language. 16, 161-180.

Grunwell, P. (1981). The Nature of Phonological Disability in Children. Academic Press, INC: London. https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/32189383.

Hartman, R. and Stork, F. (1976). Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Applied Science Publication LTD: London.

Hume, E. (1998). Metathesis in Phonological Theory: the Case of Leti. Lingua. 104, 147-186. DOI:10.1016/S0024-3841(97)00031-4.

Hulk, A. & Van der Lenden (1996). Language Mixing in a French-Dutch Bilingual Child. In E. Kellerman, B. Weltens & T. Borgaerts (eds) Toegepaste Talawetenchap in Artikelen. 55, 89-103.

Hyman, L. (1975). Phonology: Theory and Analysis. Holt, Rinehart and Winston: U.S.A.

Ingram, D. (1986). Phonological Development: Production. In P. Fletcher and M. Garman (eds). Language Acquisition: Studies in First Language Development, 223-239. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ingram, D. (1981). Phonological patterns in the Speech of Young Children. In P. Fletcher and M. Garman (eds.), Language Acquisition: Studies in First Language Development, 133-148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ingram, D. (1973). Language Development in Children. In H. Fraser and W. R. O’Donnell (eds.), Applied Linguistics and the Teaching of English, 21-36. London: Longman Group Limited.

Jakobson, R. (1971). Studies on Child Language and Aphasia. The Haque: Mouton.

Johnson, C. E. and Lancaster, P. (1998). The Development of more than one Phonology: A Case Study of a Norwegian-English Bilingual Child. International Journal of Bilingualism. 2 (3), 265- 300.

Johnson, W. and Reimers, P. (2010). Patterns in Child Phonology. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. DOI:10.1017/S0025100311000569.

Kohler, K. (1990). Segmental Reduction in Connected Speech: Phonological and Phonetic Explanations. In W. J. Hardcastle and A. Machal (eds.) Speech Production and Speech Modeling, 69-92. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht.

Leopold, W. F. (1978). A Child’s Learning of Two Languages. In E. M. Hatch (ed.), Second Language Acquisition: a Book of Readings, 23-32. Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers.

Leopold, W. F. (1970). Speech Development of a Bilingual Child: A Linguist’s Record. Vols 1-4. Reprinted AMS: New York.

Lieven, E. (2010). Bilingual Language Acquisition. Human Development. 53(5), 256-263. Doi: 10.1159/000321285.

McCarthy, J. and Prince, A. (1999). Faithfulness and Identity in Prosodic Morphology. In Rene Kager, Harry Van der Hulst, and Wim Zonneveld (eds.) The Prosody- Morphology Interface, 218- 309. Cambridge University Press.

Montler, T. (1986). An Outline of the Morphology and Phonology of Saanich, North Straits Salish. Occasional Papers in Linguistics 4. Missoula, MT: University of Montana Linguistics Laboratory (Revised version of the author’s PhD Dissertation University of Hawaii).

Muller, N. (1998). Transfer in Bilingual First Language Acquisition. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition. 1 (3), 151-172. Google Scholar.

Nicoladis, E. (1998). First Clues to the Existence of Two Input Languages: Pragmatic and Lexical Differentiation in Bilingual Child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1 Cambridge University Press 1. 105-116. DOI: 10.1017/S1366728998000236.

Omar, M. K.. (1973). The Acquisition of Egyptian Arabic as a Native Language. Georgetown University Press: Washington DC.

Paradis, J. (1996). Phonological Differentiation in a Bilingual Child: Hidegard Revisited. In A Stringfellow, D. Canada-Amitay, E. Hughes, and A. Zukowski. (eds) BUCLD 20 Proceedings, 528-539. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory. Blackwell Publishing Company. UK. Google Scholar.

Redlinger, W. E. and Park, T. (1980). Language Mixing in Young Bilinguals. Journal of Child Language. 7, 337-352.

Salim, J., and Mehawesh, M. (2014). Stages in Language Acquisition: A Case Study. English Language and Literature Studies, 4(4), 16-24. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v4n4p16.

Schnitzer, M. and Krasinski, E. (1996). The Development of Segmental Phonological Production in a Bilingual Child: A Contrasting Second Case. Journal of Child Language. 23, 547-571. DOI: 10.1017/S0305000900008941.

Schnitzer, M. and Krasinski, E. (1994). The Development of Segmental Phonological Production in a Bilingual Child. Journal of Child Language. 21, 585-623.

Stempe, D. (1969). The Acquisition of Phonetic Representation. In R. Binnick et al. (eds.), Papers from the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 443-444. Chicago: Chicago.

Steriade, D. (2001). Directional Asymmetries in Place Assimilation: a Perceptual Account. In E. Hume and K. Johnson (eds.) Perception in Phonology, Academic Press. http://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/steriade/papers/ICPHS2000.pdf.

Vogel, I. (1975). One System or Two: An Analysis of a Two-Year Romanian- English Bilingual’s Phonology. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development. 9, 43-62.

Volterra, A. V. and Taeschner, T. (1978). The Acquisition and Development of Language by Bilingual Children. Journal of Child Language. 5, 331-326.

Yip, V. and Matthews, S. (2007). The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yip, V. (2013). Simultaneous Language Acquisition. In F. Grosjean and P. Li (eds.), The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism, 5-25. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Younis, O. (2008). A Phonological Study of Child Utterances at the Age of Two. Buhuth Mustaqbaliya. 22, 7-23.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.5p.197

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.