Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-28T20:25:34.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The acquisition of speech rhythm by three-year-old bilingual and monolingual children: Cantonese and English*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2011

PEGGY P. K. MOK
PEGGY P. K. MOK*
Affiliation:
Chinese University of Hong Kong
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, Leung Kau Kui Building, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kongpeggymok@cuhk.edu.hk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of speech rhythm by Cantonese–English bilingual children and their age-matched monolingual peers. Languages can be classified in terms of rhythmic characteristics that define English as stress-timed and Cantonese as syllable-timed. Few studies have examined the concurrent acquisition of rhythmically different languages in bilingual children. This study uses data of six Cantonese–English bilingual children around age 3;0 and compares them with six monolingual children in each language using recently developed acoustic rhythmic metrics on consonantal, vocalic and syllabic intervals. Qualitative data on syllable structure complexity and vowel quality are also included. Results on syllable duration show that monolingual children display distinct rhythmic patterns while the differences between the two languages of the bilingual children are less distinct. Bilingual English has less durational variability than monolingual English. Bilingual children have a distinct phonological developmental trajectory from monolingual children, which is manifested in acquisition delay and is influenced by language dominance. This shows that the two phonologies interact at the prosodic level.

Keywords

speech rhythmbilingual acquisitionCantoneseEnglish
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 458 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank the parents of several monolingual children for the monolingual data. She is also grateful to Eunice Wong, Iris Luk, Wai Kit Kwok and Tintus Chan for data collection and segmentation. She thanks Angel Chan and Donald White for helpful discussions, and Lawrence White, Ruth Tincoff and three anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This study was funded by the Direct Grant for Research 2007–2008, Second Round, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

References

Abercrombie, D. (1967). Elements of general phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, G., & Hawkins, S. (1980). Phonological rhythm: Definition and development. In Yeni-Komshian, G., Kavanagh, J. & Ferguson, C. (eds.), Child phonology (vol. 1): Production, pp. 227–256. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barry, W. J., Andreeva, B., Russo, M., Dimitrova, S., & Kostadinova, T. (2003). Do rhythm measures tell us anything about language type? In Solé et al. (eds.), pp. 2693–2696.Google Scholar
Bauer, R. S., & Benedict, P. K. (1997). Modern Cantonese phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2009). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.12) [computer program]. http://www.praat.org/Boulade.Google Scholar
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). Early language differentiation in bilingual infants. In Cenoz, J. & Genesee, F. (eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition, pp. 71–93. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunta, F., & Ingram, D. (2007). The acquisition of speech rhythm by bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking 4- and 5-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50 (4), 999–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chao, Y. R. (1947). Cantonese primer. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Dauer, R. M. (1983). Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 51–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dellwo, V. (2006). Rhythm and speech rate: A variation coefficient for ∆C. In Karnowski, P. & Szigeti, I. (eds.), Language and language-processing, pp. 231–241. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dellwo, V., & Wagner, P. (2003). Relations between language rhythm and speech rate. In Solé et al. (eds.), pp. 471–474.Google Scholar
Deterding, D. (2001). The measurement of rhythm: A comparison of Singapore and British English. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 217–230.Google Scholar
Fletcher, P., Leung, S. C. S., Stokes, S. F., & Weizman, Z. O. (2000). Cantonese preschool language development: A guide. Hong Kong: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Forrester, M. (2002). Appropriating cultural conceptions of childhood: Participation in conversation. Childhood, 9, 255–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbon, D., & Gut, U. (2001). Measuring speech rhythm. In Dalsgaard, P., Lindberg, B., Benner, H. & Tan, Z. (eds.), Proceedings of Eurospeech 2001 Scandinavia, pp. 95–98. http://www.isca-speech.org/archive/archive_papers/eurospeech_2001/e01_0095.pdf.Google Scholar
Grabe, E., & Low, E. L. (2002). Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis. In Gussenhoven, C. & Warner, N. (eds.), Laboratory phonology VII, pp. 515–546. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Grabe, E., Post, B., & Watson, I. (1999). The acquisition of rhythmic patterns in English and French. In Ohala, J. J., Hasegawa, Y., Ohala, M., Granville, D. & Bailey, A. C. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), pp. 1201–1204.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36, 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hashimoto, A. (1972). Cantonese phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, A., & Dodd, B. (1999). A longitudinal study of phonological development of two Cantonese–English bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 349–376.Google Scholar
Jeon, H. S. (2006). Acoustic measure of speech rhythm: Korean learners of English. MSc thesis, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Jian, H. L. (2004). On the syllable timing in Taiwan English. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2004, pp. 247–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kao, D. (1971). Structure of the syllable in Cantonese. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M. (2002). Developing vowel systems as a window to bilingual phonology. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 315–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kehoe, M., Lleó, C., & Rakow, M. (2004). Voice onset time in bilingual German–Spanish children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, P. (1975). A course in phonetics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Liberman, I. Y., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F. W., & Carter, B. (1974). Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 18, 201–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lleó, C. (2002). The role of markedness in the acquisition of complex prosodic structures by German–Spanish bilinguals. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 291–313.Google Scholar
Lleó, C., & Kehoe, M. (2002). On the interaction of phonological systems in child bilinugal acquisition. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 6, 233–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lleó, C., Rakow, M., & Kehoe, M. (2007). Acquiring rhythmically different languages in a bilingual context. In Trouvain, J. & Barry, W. J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), pp. 1545–1548.Google Scholar
Low, E. L., Grabe, E., & Nolan, F. (2000). Quantitative characterisations of speech rhythm: Syllable-timing in Singapore English. Language and Speech, 43 (4), 377–401.Google Scholar
Mok, P. P. K. (2009). On the syllable-timing of Cantonese and Beijing Mandarin. Chinese Journal of Phonetics, 2, 148–154.Google Scholar
Mok, P. P. K., & Dellwo, V. (2008). Comparing native and non-native speech rhythm using acoustic rhythmic measures: Cantonese, Beijing Mandarin and English. In Barbosa, P. A., Madureira, S. & Reis, C. (eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008, pp. 423–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nazzi, T., Bertoncini, J., & Mehler, J. (1998). Language discrimination by newborns: Towards an understanding of the role of rhythm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 756–766.Google Scholar
Nazzi, T., Jusczyk, P. W., & Johnson, E. K. (2000). Language discrimination by English-learning 5-month-olds: Effects of rhythm and familiarity. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolan, F., & Asu, E. L. (2009). The pairwise variability index and coexisting rhythms in language. Phonetica, 66, 64–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paradis, J. (2001). Do bilingual two-year-olds have separate phonological systems? The International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 19–38.Google Scholar
Peterson, G. E., & Lehiste, I. (1960). Duration of syllable nuclei in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 32, 693–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pike, K. L. (1945). The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73, 265–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roach, P. (1982). On the distinction between stress-timed languages and syllable-timed languages. In Crystal, D. (ed.), Linguistic controversies: Essays in honour of F. R. Palmer, pp. 73–79. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Setter, J. (2006). Speech rhythm in world Englishes: The case of Hong Kong. TESOL Quarterly, 40 (4), 763–782.Google Scholar
Solé, M. J., Recasens, D., & Romero, J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS).Google Scholar
Treiman, R. (1985). Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39, 161–181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treiman, R., & Zukowski, A. (1996). Children's sensitivity to syllables, onsets, rimes and phonemes. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 61, 193–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vihman, M. (1996). Phonological development. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Warner, N., & Arai, T. (2001). Japanese mora-timing: A review. Phonetica, 58, 1–25.Google Scholar
White, D. (2009). Speech rhythm development in a balanced Cantonese–English bilingual child. MA thesis, Chinese University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
White, D., & Mok, P. P. K. (2008). On the development of speech rhythm in a Cantonese–English bilingual child: A case study. Presented at the Conference on Bilingual Acquisition in Early Childhood, Hong Kong.Google Scholar
White, L., & Mattys, S. L. (2007). Calibrating rhythm: First language and second language studies. Journal of Phonetics, 35, 501–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitworth, N. (2002). Speech rhythm production in three German–English bilingual families. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 9, 175–205.Google Scholar
Wiget, L., White, L., Schuppler, B., Grenon, I., Rauch, O., & Mattys, S. L. (2010). How stable are acoustic metrics of contrastive speech rhythm? Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127, 1559–1569.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2007). The bilingual child: Early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuan, J. H. (1960). Hanyu Fangyan Gaiyao [A survey of Chinese dialects]. Beijing: Wenzi Gaige Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Dr Mok online only appendix

Dr Mok online only appendix

Download Dr Mok online only appendix(PDF)
PDF 51.6 KB