VOT production in Stop Consonants in English-Arabic Bilingual Children

This study investigates the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of stop consonant production in six bilingual English-Arabic children in order to examine whether bilingual children possess one unitary or two separate linguistic systems. A total of six English-Arabic bilingual children participated ages 5 to 10. English and Arabic stop consonants followed by a vowel /a/ made by bilingual children were measured in terms of Voice-Onset-Time. This study found that bilingual children have distinctive voiced and voiceless stop consonants in English. However, there were some influences from Arabic stop systems. The results of this study supported the theory of two separate linguistic systems. Our research findings suggested that children did acquire separate VOT patterns. The aim of this study was to find out whether bilingual children produced the appropriate pattern of VOT known for each language. Results showed that overall participating children produced the voicing lead and short lag found in Arabic stops. In English the children produced the short lag/ long lag differentiation apparent in stop consonants. This study provides a preliminary result. Thus, it is difficult to claim the underlying phonetic systems for bilingual children with such preliminary data. Further studies are needed to verify the findings of this study. Introduction Research on acquisition of speech in bilingual children started as early as 1939 when Leopold observed the simultaneous acquisition of English and German in his daughter. Since