Feature generalization in Dutch–German bilingual and monolingual children’s speech production

First Published November 29, 2021 ; Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the ‘voiced’ dorsal plosive /ɡ/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch–German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6–6;0 years generalized voicing to /ɡ/ in Dutch; and (2) whether there was evidence for featural cross-linguistic influence from Dutch to German in bilingual children, testing monolingual German-speaking children as controls.... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Stoehr, Antje
Benders, Titia
van Hell, Janet G.
Fikkert, Paula
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Verlag/Hrsg.: SAGE
Schlagwörter: Speech production / phonological features / simultaneous bilinguals / cross-linguistic influence / preschoolers / Dutch / German
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27451971
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/10810/55151

First Published November 29, 2021 ; Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the ‘voiced’ dorsal plosive /ɡ/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch–German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6–6;0 years generalized voicing to /ɡ/ in Dutch; and (2) whether there was evidence for featural cross-linguistic influence from Dutch to German in bilingual children, testing monolingual German-speaking children as controls. Bilingual and monolingual children’s production of /ɡ/ provided partial evidence for feature generalization: in Dutch, both bilingual and monolingual children either recombined Dutch voicing and place features to produce /ɡ/, suggesting feature generalization, or resorted to producing familiar /k/, suggesting segment-level adaptation within their Dutch phonological system. In German, bilingual children’s production of /ɡ/ was influenced by Dutch although the Dutch phoneme inventory lacks /ɡ/. This suggests that not only segments but also voicing features can exert cross-linguistic influence. Taken together, phonological features appear to play a crucial role in aspects of bilingual and monolingual children’s speech production. ; This work was supported by the Basque Government [BERC 2018-2021 program]; the Spanish State Research Agency [BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2015-0490]; the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant 843533]; and the National Science Foundation [BCS1349110; OISE 1545900].