Abstract for Leah Fabiano-Smith colloquium

Little is known about how typically-developing bilingual children acquire the speech sounds of their two languages. Even less is known about the phonology of bilingual children who present with phonological disorders. This study aimed to examine how typically-developing bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children acquire early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds of both Spanish and English. Using Shriberg's (1993) categories of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds for English, phonological analyses of accuracy were performed on the English of bilinguals and compared to monolingual English-speaking children. The productions of monolingual Spanish-speaking children were used to establish categories for Spanish, and then used to examine the Spanish productions of bilinguals.

Twenty-four typically-developing children, ages 3;0 to 4;0, were included: eight bilingual Spanish-English speaking children, eight monolingual Spanish speakers, and eight monolingual English speakers. Single word speech samples were obtained to examine (1) differences on the accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds between bilingual children and monolingual children and (2) trends on the accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds within languages for bilingual children and monolingual children. Findings demonstrated that the accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds was similar, although not identical, between monolingual and bilingual children in both Spanish and in English.

These findings indicate that the categories of early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds could possibly be used for assessment of phonological disorders for both monolingual Spanish-speaking children and for the Spanish productions of bilingual children. This more narrow measure may also detect similarities and differences between monolinguals and bilinguals that would otherwise be overlooked by broad measures of accuracy.