Running head: PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 1

Phonological Acquisition and Disordered Speech

in Bilingual Children: A Review

Giuliana O’Connell

Northeastern University

ENGW 3307

Professor Musselman
20 October, 2019
Word Count: 2427
APA Formatting
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 2

Abstract

Bilingual children are at once over- and under-diagnosed with speech and language disorders.

Some of the gaps in care that they experience may be explained by a lack of understanding of

typical and disordered bilingual language acquisition and language interaction. The focus of this

review is phonological acquisition; looking at various studies on typically developing (TD)

bilinguals as well as bilinguals with developmental language delays (DLD). The studies

evaluated agree that appearance of slight delays may be found in one or both of the phonetic

inventories of TD bilinguals when compared to inventories of their monolingual peers, but did

not have any consensus on the theories of transfer, acceleration, and deceleration. Additionally,

evidence was found for separation of the two inventories with some children having acquired

phonemes in one of their languages but not yet the other. This separation of phonetic inventories

indicates a need for DLD testing and treatment in both of a child’s languages.
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 3

Phonological Acquisition and Disordered Speech

in Bilingual Children: A Review

Little is known about the phonological acquisition and disordered speech of bilingual

children compared to the knowledge about their monolingual counterparts. With increasing

awareness of the needs of bilingual children, the lack of research on what typical bilingual

development looks like may be impeding diagnostic accuracy for speech and language disorders

and delays. The most easily recognizable of the speech and language disorders for parents,

teachers, and Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) are phonological disorders, due to their

effect on pronunciation and intelligibility (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al., 2019). To better understand

language disorders, we first need to know how phonological development is affected in bilingual

children and what these effects may show in individuals with phonological disorders. It had long

been assumed that interaction between languages in bilingual children would impede their

overall language development. While this theory has lost major traction, it is still unknown how

and if the languages interact and what those interactions might result in.

Methodology

This paper reviews research published in the last ten years on normative and disordered bilingual

phonological acquisition in children who are simultaneous bilinguals. As there are relatively few

articles published on this topic, the main criteria for inclusion in this paper was original research

conducted with bilingual participants.

Variation in Studies.

Studies in this review included those with both bilingual and monolingual typically

developing (TD) and developmental language delay (DLD) participants, studies with only
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 4

bilingual TD and DLD participants, and studies with bilingual and monolingual TD participants.

Table 1 shows participant types and numbers for all studies.

Participant Selection. Inclusion criteria varied by study with some taking in more data

on participants than others such as the inclusion of participant handedness in Marini et al. (2018).

Other studies appeared to have deficits in diversity of demographics regarding parental education

for one or more language which may result in skewed data due to input differences in the home

environments (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009). Three studies, two of which used the same

sets of data, controlled for dialects in their participant selection (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein,

2009, Fabiano-Smith & Barlow, 2010, Fabiano-Smith & Hoffman, 2018) which should create

more accurate and consistent results.

Notably, five out of the eight studies included used Spanish as one of the languages of

study and five used English as one of the languages of study, following a larger pattern of Euro-

centric data collection (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009, Fabiano-Smith & Barlow, 2010,

Fabiano-Smith & Hoffman, 2018, Rossouw & Pascoe, 2018, Montenari et al., 2018, Aguilar-

Mediavilla et al., 2019). Table 2 shows the languages and tests used by each study examined. The

trend towards European data may be explained by frequency of use in the contexts of study with

all but one of the studies originating in English or Spanish speaking majority countries.

Study Methods. In the studies reviewed, all eight involved a single word production

task, many using pictures to elicit naming responses from participants. This type of task is

beneficial when gathering data from many participants as it allows for the researcher to target

specific phonemes while still eliciting spontaneous production. In addition to the single word

production, two studies examined phoneme comprehension (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al., 2019,

Marini et al., 2019). In both studies, this was achieved by presenting participants with photos
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 5

containing lexical minimal pairs and asking participants to point to the photo matching the word

spoken by the researcher (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al., 2019, Marini et al., 2019). This method

creates data which pairs well with the phonemic production data and would help to ensure that

participants with DLD were correctly diagnosed and not experiencing an articulation issue. A

single longitudinal study was conducted (Montenari et al., 2018) evaluating the phonetic

inventories of children in a Head Start preschool program at the beginning of their first year of

school and again at the beginning of their second year.

Bilingual Development

Bilingual children are at higher risk for both over and under-diagnoses with speech and

language impairments (Marini et al., 2019) (Montenari et al., 2018). SLPs may confuse language

differences for language delays or impairments leading to incorrect diagnoses (Marini et al.,

2019). Similarly, speech and language delays may go overlooked in bilingual children as they

can be attributed to language differences. Bilingual children are thought to exhibit a slower

phonological acquisition process than their monolingual peers as they are acquiring the

phonemes of two languages (Montenari et al., 2018). The slow phonological development is

especially pronounced in the earliest stages of their language development and the children

usually catch up to or exceed the abilities of their peers by age 5 (Montenari et al., 2018). It is in

the stages from 3-5 years old when potential for positive and negative misdiagnosis is highest

(Fabiano-Smith & Hoffman, 2018). Three processes of language interaction are observed in

bilingual phonological acquisition and are discussed in all of the eight studies reviewed. These

processes are transfer, acceleration, and deceleration. Transfer effects can be seen when children

use phonemes exclusive to one of their languages, in speech in the other language (Fabiano-

Smith & Goldstein, 2009). Acceleration is a process similar to that of bootstrapping, where the
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 6

child uses knowledge and skills from one language to aid in, and speed up their acquisition of the

other language (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009). Deceleration is a process in which a child

experiences negative effects on their language acquisition due to interference from their other

language (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009).

Findings

Agreement on a general lack of research on the topic was noted by all studies examined.

Additionally, those sounds found in both of a participant’s languages were consistently stronger

in their inventories (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009, Montenari et al., 2018), though this

finding may also be explained by these sounds occurring at high frequencies cross-linguistically

(Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009). As hypothesized by all studies which examined participants

with DLD, the bilingual DLD participants had weaker phonetic inventories than their TD

counterparts (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al., 2019, Marini et al., 2019) Evidence for a separation of

the phonemic systems was noted in one study, with participants having demonstrated acquisition

of sounds which occur in both languages, in only one language and not the other (Fabiano-Smith

& Barlow, 2010). In addition to separation of phonetic inventories, transfer was also found

across studies with participants using phonemes unique to one of their languages in speech in the

other (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009, Fabiano-Smith & Barlow, 2010, Montenari et al., 2018,

Rossouw & Pascoe, 2018). Similarly conflicting results were noted for acceleration and

deceleration (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009, Fabiano-Smith & Barlow, 2010). Those studies

which did not have monolingual participants noted positive and negative transfer effects instead

as they could not make claims of acceleration or deceleration without monolingual data to

compare to (Lam & To, 2017, Montenari et al., 2018). The single longitudinal study (Montenari
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 7

et al., 2018) found greater advances in the language of instruction in school in participants’

phonological development than in their home language.

Treatment Implications for DLD.

Results from Fabiano-Smith & Barlow (2010) indicating the separation of phonetic

inventories between languages would call for evaluation and treatment in both of the child’s

languages. While findings about acceleration (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009, Fabiano-Smith

& Barlow, 2010) indicate that language learning in one language can aid in that of another, it is

yet unknown whether speech therapy treatment experiences these same effects. Research is

needed to better understand potential acceleration effects of speech therapy treatment for DLD

on the language not used in treatment.

Rossouw & Pascoe were the only researchers to document results pre- and post-treatment

as well as discussion of the course of treatment of a documented bilingual DLD participant

(2018). In their case study, treatment was administered to the isiXhosa and English bilingual

participant only in English though the researchers noted dual language treatment is the ideal

method. The decision to use English as the language of treatment was made in order to replicate

what are most common treatment environments in the country of study (Rossouw & Pascoe,

2018). Treatment was found to be effective for reducing instances of gliding, a phonological

process which was appropriate at the participant’s age in English but not isiXhosa, but no

reduction occurred of consonant cluster reduction, a process age-inappropriate in both languages

(Rossouw & Pascoe, 2018). The retention of consonant cluster reduction may be explained by

the lack of consonant clusters in isiXhosa (Rossouw & Pascoe, 2018)., indicating potential

language interference and deceleration.

PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 8

Discussion

The co-occurrence of acceleration, deceleration, transfer, and separation in bilinguals

demonstrate the messy appearance of bilingual acquisition data. These conflicting results point

towards no clear understanding of a single way in which phonological acquisition occurs in

bilinguals but instead a combination of processes working with and against each other. While

bilingual acquisition was slightly behind that of monolinguals in all studies which included

monolinguals (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2009, Fabiano-Smith & Barlow, 2010, Fabiano-

Smith & Hoffman, 2018), none of the studies found it to be a significant difference. One issue

noted with the studies examined, was sample size. The two studies looking at single participant

groups, maintained high numbers of participants with 54 and 35 respectively (Lam & To, 2017,

Montenari et al., 2018). All other studies maintained smaller numbers of participants hovering

around ten participants per research demographic limiting data output (see Table 1). An

exception to this pattern is the study by Rossouw & Pascoe (2018), with only a single participant.

More data is necessary to find potential patterns which may not be evident from the limited

research completed on the topic. Additionally, research to create phonetic inventories for

different stages of typical development in bilinguals would be useful in creating diagnostic tools

for SLPs, however; these studies have demonstrated that unique inventories would be needed for

each combination of languages in order to accurately reflect the population which they represent.

As of this time, research by Dr. Fabiano-Smith appears to be the most robust research existing on

the topic. More data collection and analysis in the comparative style seen in Dr. Fabiano-Smith’s

research could yield productive results. The lack of expansion on separation of phonemic

inventories which was noted in Fabiano-Smith & Barlow (2010) is surprising. Additional
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 9

research on alignment of expected acquisition of phonemes across languages and potential

reasons for separation is needed.

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References

Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Buil-Legaz, L., & Sanchez-Azanza, V. A. (2019). Speech profiles of

Spanish-Catalan children with developmental language disorder. Clinical Linguistics &

Phonetics. doi:10.1080/02699206.2019.1619096

Core, C., & Scarpelli, C. (2015). Phonological Development in Young Bilinguals: Clinical

Implications. 36(2), 100–108. doi:10.1055/s-0035-1549105

Babatsouli, Elena P. D. (2015). What Bilingualism Tells us About Phonological Acquisition.

Retrieved from

https://www.academia.edu/15851419/What_Bilingualism_Tells_us_About_Phonological

_Acquisition

Fabiano-Smith, L., & Barlow, J. A. (2010). Interaction in Bilingual Phonological Acquisition:

Evidence from Phonetic Inventories. International Journal of Bilingual Education and

Bilingualism, 13(1), 81. doi:10.1080/13670050902783528

Marini, A., Sperindè, P., Ruta, I., Savegnago, C., & Avanzini, F. (2019). Linguistic Skills in

Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorders: A Pilot Study. Frontiers in

Psychology, 10, 493. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00493

Montanari Simona, Mayr Robert, & Subrahmanyam Kaveri. (2018). Bilingual Speech Sound

Development During the Preschool Years: The Role of Language Proficiency and Cross-

Linguistic Relatedness. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(10),

2467–2486. doi:10.1044/2018_JSLHR-S-17-0393

Rossouw, K., & Pascoe, M. (2018). Intervention for bilingual speech sound disorders: A case

study of an isiXhosa-English-speaking child. South African Journal of Communication

Disorders, 65(1), a566. doi:10.4102/sajcd.v65i1.566

PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 11

McLeod, S., & Goldstein, B. (2012). Multilingual aspects of speech sound disorders in children.

Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/northeastern-

ebooks/detail.action?docID=922853

Fabiano-Smith Leah, & Goldstein Brian A. (2010). Phonological Acquisition in Bilingual

Spanish–English Speaking Children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing

Research, 53(1), 160–178. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2009/07-0064)

Kitty K.Y. Lam, & Carol K.S To. (2017, November 1). Speech sound disorders or differences:

Insights from bilingual children speaking two Chinese languages- ClinicalKey. Retrieved

October 20, 2019, from Clinicalkey.com website: https://www-clinicalkey-

com.ezproxy.neu.edu/#!/content/playContent/1-s2.0-
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Tables

Table 1: Breakdown of participant demographics in included studies

Author(s) Total # Bilingual Total DLD Bilingual DLD Age of
Participants Participants Participants Participants Participants
Fabiano-Smith & 44 22 15 8 5 y/o
Hoffman
Aguilar & Mediavila 28 28 14 14 6 y/o
Fabiano-Smith & 24 8 0 0 3-4 y/o
Barlow
Marini et al. 22 22 11 11 7-10 y/o

Montanari et al. 35 35 0 35 3-4 and 4-5 y/o

Rossouw & Pascoe 1 1 1 1 4 y/o

Fabiano-Smith & 24 8 0 0 3-4 y/o
Goldstein
Lam & To 54 54 0 0 3.5-6 y/o

Table 2: Languages and tests used in included studies.

Author(s) Language 1 Language 2 Tests used

Fabiano-Smith & English Spanish GFTA & BESA
Hoffman
Aguilar & Mediavila Spanish Catalan A-RE-HA & A-RE-PA
Fabiano-Smith & English Spanish BESA
Barlow
Marini et al. Italian German BVL_4-12

Montanari et al. English Spanish BESA

Rossouw & Pascoe isiXhosa English DEAP & Masincokoleni

isiXhosa Speech Assessment

Fabiano-Smith & English Spanish BESA

Goldstein
Lam & To Putonghua Cantonese HKCAT & a Putonghua
picture-naming task
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 13

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my peer reviewer Jacob Wikar for contributing the view of a non-linguist. I

would also like to thank Leah Doroski for her multiple peer reviews, continued support, and

allowing me to excitedly talk about linguistics that may only interest me. I would like to

acknowledge the hand that all of my former and current Linguistics professors have had in

shaping my interests and abilities within the field. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Cecelia

Musselman for her support, encouragement, insights on writing, and most importantly edits and

reviews.
PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A REVIEW 14