Comparison of VOTs in Mandarin–English bilingual children and corresponding monolingual children and adults

Abstract

Word-initial stops in Mandarin and English show a distinctive phonological categorization but a similar phonetic realization along the VOT (Voice Onset Time) continuum. Previous research reported that native Mandarin adults produce measurably longer long-lag VOTs than native English adults. The present study examined whether and how the difference between Mandarin and English VOTs is manifested in monolingual children and Mandarin–English bilingual children. The participants included 15 five- to six-year-old sequential bilingual children, 24 corresponding monolingual children (15 Mandarin, 9 English), and 22 monolingual adults (12 Mandarin, 10 English). The bilingual children were divided into two groups (Bi-low and Bi-high) based on the amount of experience in English. Each participant was recorded producing 18 Mandarin words and/or 18 English words containing six stops in each language. The VOT values were measured from the beginning of stop burst to the onset of the voicing. The results showed that the language difference in VOT in the monolingual children was manifested in a pattern similar to the monolingual adults. However, Mandarin and English VOTs showed less separable distributions in the two groups of bilingual children. Further analysis suggested that both groups of bilingual children tended to separate Mandarin and English short-lag VOTs but only the Bi-low children showed different long-lag VOTs between the two languages. These results suggested that due to the bilingual effects and L1–L2 (first language – second language) interactions, even though the bilingual children tried to separate the two VOT systems, they implemented the separation in a different manner than the monolingual speakers.

Bilinguals produce language-specific voice onset time in two true-voicing languages

“…The authors attributed this to the influence of English on Italian but not on Spanish. Language-specific VOT production has also been documented in children who speak Mandarin and English, both aspirating languages (Yang, 2021;Qi et al, 2012). These children produced distinct VOT in Mandarin and English shortlag and aspirated plosives.…”

Leveraging the uniformity framework to examine crosslinguistic similarity for long-lag stops in spontaneous Cantonese-English bilingual speech

“…While these values are objectively differentthough based on small sample sizes-it seems that using the same laryngeal timing gesture would be advantageous given the small and possibly imperceptible difference across monolingual populations. While this remains an empirical question, it follows the finding that bilingual Mandarin-English children did not distinguish between languages in VOT [18]. Following the predictions of SLM-r [7], long-lag items with minimally distinct VOT are more likely to assimilate or dissimilate than coexist in such close proximity.…”

“…English and Cantonese initial long-lag stops are strong candidates for shared underlying representation. They exhibit both phonetic and phonological similarity, like the Mandarin-English comparison in [18]. Similarity is arguably best captured abstractly by relative within-inventory position as opposed to physical characteristics [1].…”

“…While composite categories can be readily identified, there are fewer good examples of full category convergence, at least in the early bilingualism literature. One example comes from a lab study of Mandarin-English bilingual children: highly proficient 5 to 6year-olds did not differ in VOT across Mandarin and English long-lag stops, despite differences across the monolingual comparison groups [18]. This result suggests the difference is either too small to maintain or that 5 to 6-year-old children have not yet mastered it.…”

“…This result suggests the difference is either too small to maintain or that 5 to 6-year-old children have not yet mastered it. However, the claims in [18] should be tempered as language mode was not well-controlled for and adult bilingual behavior was not considered.…”