Compensation for Phonological Assimilation in Bilingual Children. Issue 2 (2nd April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Carbajal, M. Julia; Chartofylaka, Lamprini; Hamilton, Mollie; Fiévet, Anne-Caroline; Peperkamp, Sharon
• Is Part Of: Language learning and development. Volume 16:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 141
• Page End: 160
• Publication Date: 2020-04-02
• Subjects: Language acquisition -- Research -- Periodicals; Children -- Language -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1717955
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1547-5441

Abstract

ABSTRACT: We investigate bilingual children's perception of assimilations, i.e. phonological rules by which a consonant at a word edge adopts a phonological feature of a neighboring consonant. For instance, English has place assimilation (e.g., green is pronounced with a final [m] in green pen ), while French has voicing assimilation (e.g., sac is pronounced with a final [g] in sac vert "green bag"). Previous research has shown that French and English monolingual toddlers compensate for the assimilation rule of their language, correctly recovering the intended words, but not for a rule that does not exist in their language. Using a word recognition videogame with French sentences, we show that French-English bilingual 6-year-olds perform exactly like French monolinguals of the same age: they compensate for voicing but not for place assimilation. Thus, despite their dual language input they have acquired French voicing assimilation and show no interference from English place assimilation.