Little is known about the acquisition of phonology by children learning Cantonese as their first language. This paper describes the phoneme repertoires and phonological error patterns used by 268 Cantonesespeaking children aged 2; o to 6; o, as well as a longitudinal study of tone acquisition by four children aged 1 ;2 to 2;o. Children had mastered the contrastive use of tones and vowels by two years. While the order of acquisition of consonants was similar to that reported for English, the rate of acquisition was more rapid. The developmental error patterns used by more than 10% of children are also reported as common in other languages. However, specific rules associated with Cantonese phonology were also identified. Few phonological errors were made after age four. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the ambient language influences the implementation of universal tendencies in phonological acquisition.

The study investigated similarities and differences in the development of the Cantonese and the Putonghua phonology of children becoming bilingual in those languages with different dominant languages. One hundred children living in Hong Kong or in Shenzhen and aged from 2;6—4;11, who were simultaneously acquiring Cantonese and Putonghua provided the data we report. The Cantonese Segmental Phonology Test (So, 1993) and the Putonghua Segmental Phonology Test (So & Zhou, 2000) were used to elicit phonemes of each language. The percentages of accurately uttered phonemes, children's ages for phonemes' emergence, and their ages for the production of phonological processes were the measures of phonological development. Overall, language dominance plays a role in the children's Cantonese and Putonghua phonological development. Generally, the bilingual children's phonological development was faster in Cantonese whether they are Cantonese or Putonghua dominant. All children showed similar bilingual pattern. The pattern affords the best single crystallization of the findings which we draw on further in discussing theories and the extent of the influence of language dominance on bilingual phonological acquisition.

The prediction that Cantonese children wearing cochlear implants would have better phonological skills than children having hearing aids with a similar degree of hearing loss was confirmed. Cochlear implant usage appeared to promote consonant feature production development to a greater degree than did the use of a hearing aid.

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