Phonetic category formation in Korean-English bilingual children

Abstract

This is an NICHD (RHD061527A) funded study examining vowels and stops produced by Korean-English bilingual (KEB) children at 3, 5, and 7 years of age in order to determine whether bilingual children develop single or separate linguistic systems in the learning of their two languages. Though a long-standing theoretical issue in bilingualism, the question of whether bilingual children develop one or two distinct PHONETIC systems has not been fully explored. In the present study, 55 KEB children participated who first learned Korean, then English, in the US. Word-initial VOT and f0 values in the following vowel were measured for stops in both languages, as well as F1 and F2 values for vowels. We found developmental patterns and multi-dimensional representation of phonetic categories between vowels and stops. Specifically, 3 year-old KEB children did not distinguish between English and Korean vowels or stops, whereas 5 year-olds distinguished vowels but not the stop categories of Korean and English, and 7 yea...