Development of Phonetic Categories of Stop Consonants in Spanish-English Bilingual Children

Purpose: The present study examined stops produced by Spanish-English bilingual (SEB) children in order to determine whether the bilingual children possess distinct phonetic categories across their two languages at 5 to 6 and 10 years of age. Methods: Voice-Onset-Time (VOT) of English and Spanish stops were measured acoustically. VOT values of each place of articulation were compared across languages in each age group separately. Results: It was found that 5- to 6-year-old SEB children only made significant distinctions between English and Spanish for voiceless stop consonants; however, 10-year-old SEB children demonstrated distinctive categories between the two languages for both voiced and voiceless stops. Conclusions: The findings suggest that similar to previous studies, distinctive phonetic category is only partially developed at age 5 to 6 but it is developed fully by age 10. While developing, a transfer effect existed in the SEB children’s stop production.