Voice onset time of voiceless bilabial and velar stops in 3-year-old bilingual children and their age-matched monolingual peers

Abstract

This study investigates aspects of voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless bilabial and velar stops in monolingual and bilingual children. VOT poses a special challenge for bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking children because although this VOT distinction exists in both languages, the values differ for the same contrast across Spanish and English. Twenty-four 3-year-olds participated in this study (8 bilingual Spanish–English, 8 monolingual Spanish and 8 monolingual English). The VOT productions of /p/ and /k/ in syllable-initial stressed singleton position were compared across participants. Non-parametric statistical analyses were performed to examine differences (1) between monolinguals and bilinguals and (2) between English and Spanish. The main findings of the study were that monolingual and bilingual children generally differed on VOT in English, but not in Spanish. No statistically significant differences were found between the Spanish and the English VOT of the bilingual children, but the VOT values did differ significantly for monolingual Spanish- versus monolingual English-speaking participants. Our findings were interpreted in terms of Flege’s Speech Learning Model, finding possible evidence for equivalence classification.

• VOT
• bilingual Spanish–English

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the children and families who participated in their study. They also thank Donna Jackson Maldonado, Rosa Patrícia Bárcenas Acosta and Martha Beatríz Soto Martínez at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro for their help with data collection and Brian Goldstein at Temple University for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.