The phonological skills of bilingual preschool children speaking Polish and Ukrainian in Poland

ABSTRACT

The extent of quantitative and qualitative differences in phonological development between bilingual children and their monolingual counterparts remains unresolved, especially with regard to typologically-related languages. The current study used a comparative research design to examine the phonological skills of preschool children speaking Polish and Ukrainian, a pair of Slavic languages hitherto unexplored in this context. It involved 57 typically-developing children aged 4;0–6;0, i.e. 18 bilingual children speaking Polish and Ukrainian in Poland, 19 monolingual Polish children in Poland and 20 monolingual Ukrainian children in Ukraine. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of data collected through single-word elicitation tests involved between-group comparisons of bilingual and monolingual children's speech and within-group comparisons of the bilingual children's phonological systems. Results paint a complex picture of bilingual phonological development with mostly typical patterns, a strong crosslinguistic influence, and rare processes which are difficult to interpret. Authors hypothesise that such general patterns of phonological process use might be typical of bilingual development involving typologically-related and geographically close languages. Findings underscore the need to assess bilingual children in all their languages and dialects. Errors which cannot be interpreted through either rules of normal development or crosslinguistic interaction could be a sign of disorder.

KEYWORDS:

• Early bilingualism
• bilingual acquisition
• bilingual phonological development
• Polish-Ukrainian bilingualism
• bilingual speech assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Research ethics

This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Institute of Psychology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków [KE/02/062018].

Notes

1 Phonemes /ʃ, ʒ, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ / are sometimes transcribed with the symbols /ʂ, ʐ, t͡ʂ, d͡ʐ/ to mark their retroflex articulation in Polish.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland [under Grant OPUS 14 No. 2017/27/HS2/01573].

Notes on contributors

Robert Debski

Dr Robert Debski is an Associate Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He is an applied linguist and a Practising Certified Member of Speech Pathology Australia. His research interests include bilingual development, the dynamics of community language maintenance and shift, and problem-based learning.

Rafał Młyński

Dr Rafał Młyński is an Assistant Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He is a speech pathologist conducting research in bilingual development, bilingual speech and language assessment, dyslexia and problem-based learning.

Mariya Redkva

Dr Mariya Redkva is an Assistant Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She is a linguist. Her current research interests focus on bilingualism, in particular the language acquisition and bilingual development of Ukrainian children living in Poland, Canada and the USA.