On the Acquisition of English Voiceless Stop VOT by Indonesian-English Bilinguals: Evidence of Input Frequency

Evynurul Laily Zen

doi:10.9744/kata.20.2.45-52

Abstract

The paper attempted to investigate the acquisition of Voice Onset Time (VOT) of voiceless stop consonants of English /p/, /t/, and /k/ by Indonesian-English bilingual children in its close relation to how second language (L2) input shapes the L2 VOT production. It looked at two types of bilingual participants; (1) one 6-year-old participant receiving extensive input of English natives from YouTube in about 8 hours per day since she was two in addition to having an interactive communication in English with her family members (2) four students (aged 7-8 years old) of International Class Program with non-native environment of English. Both groups were residing in Malang, East Java, Indonesia at the time of data collection. The comparative analysis concluded that the VOT valued differ significantly across different inputs. The participants with non native input acquired much shorter VOTs falling within the average of 28 – 36 ms, while the one with native input could achieve native-like VOTs in the average of 69 ms for /p/ and /t/ and even longer for stop consonant /k/. Contributing factors of individual differences might arrive from input frequency levels, types of inputs, and complexities of phonological properties of Indonesian and English.

Highlights

The development of two language systems in a bilingual self has always been thought-provoking in language acquisition as the two systems are repeatedly found to influence each other during the process of acquisition and development
I aim to (1) measure the Voice Onset Time (VOT) values of English voiceless stop consonants produced by Indonesian-English bilingual children across different inputs, and (2) estimate the probable contributing factors in the acquisition of VOTs where I discuss the empirical findings as follows
Parable finding where it stands on the range of 20 ms to 54 ms (See Figure 1) making it 28 – 36 ms on the average. This intermediate range of VOT value is acquired within the context of non native input as teachers and schoolmates are all non natives of English, even though these students are situated in an English speaking environment during the school hours

Summary

Introduction

The development of two language systems in a bilingual self has always been thought-provoking in language acquisition as the two systems are repeatedly found to influence each other during the process of acquisition and development. I look closely at the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) of voiceless stop consonants of English by two sets of Indonesian-English bilingual children who have been exposed to two different types of L2 inputs It is in a particular purpose of proofing which of these inputs work best in the acquisition of English voiceless stop consonants VOTs. VOT, according to Ladefoged and Johnson (2011, 151) is “the interval between the release of a closure and the start of the voicing” which is characterized by the presence of a period of silence during and after the release of the following articulation in aspirated sounds. Sindhi‟s aspirated stop VOTs, for example, is only 50 ms, Navajo is 150 ms, whereas English‟s initial [p] in particular would be around 50 – 60 ms (Ibid)

Methods

Results

Conclusion