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Child L2 development: A longitudinal case study on Voice Onset Times in word-initial stops*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2009

ELLEN SIMON
ELLEN SIMON*
Affiliation:
Ghent University
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Ellen Simon, Ghent University, English Department, Rozier 44, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. tel: +32 9 264 36 47; e-mail: Ellen.Simon@UGent.be
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Abstract

This paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study examining the acquisition of the English voice system by a three-year-old native speaker of Dutch. The study aims to examine whether the child develops two different phonetic systems or uses just one system for both languages, and compares the early L2 acquisition process with L1, simultaneous bilingual and late L2 acquisition. The results reveal that the child successfully acquires the English contrast between short-lag and long-lag stops, but gradually changes the Dutch system, which contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, into the direction of the English system.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 159 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

I am grateful to the child for participating in this study and to the child's parents for generously allowing me to record their son over a period of seven months. I wish to thank John Kingston for many helpful discussions and feedback. Thanks also to Rebecca Danton for help during the data collection and to Christopher Butler and Filip Agneessens for help with the statistics. The paper has benefited from useful suggestions by two anonymous Journal of Child Language reviewers and an Associate Editor. The research reported on in this paper has been made possible by a postdoctoral fellowship of the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF)/Francqui Foundation and by a postdoctoral research grant of the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders (FWO).

References

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