Evidence of phonological transfer in bilingual preschoolers who speak Arabic and French

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to document evidence of phonological transfer in bilingual preschoolers. Specifically, we focus on the phonological development of bilingual children acquiring French and Arabic. Method: Nine children who spoke Arabic and French, aged three years old, participated in a picture-naming task in both languages. Three types of measurement were used to examine the interaction between the two systems: consonants accuracy; inventory of acquired consonants; and types of errors. Data and analysis: The accuracy of shared and unshared consonants between Arabic and French were compared with a repeated measures analysis of variance, and error patterns were analyzed. Conclusions: Two main results suggest that these bilingual children have two phonological systems that interacted. First, the children had an inventory of acquired consonants that differed according to language. Second, they produced shared consonants more accurately than unshared consonants, indicating positive interactions and low accuracy for unshared consonants, indicating negative interactions. Originality: This study contributes much-needed research relating to the development of bilingual children, particularly children who are acquiring Arabic and French. Implications: These findings enrich the understanding of bilingual phonological development and contribute to understanding how two phonological systems interact. This study also has clinical implications for evaluation and intervention with bilingual children.

Internal and external factors contributing to variability in consonant accuracy of Arabic–French simultaneous bilingual children

“…We conducted a first study on the phonological development of three-year-old simultaneous bilingual Arabic-French children (Meziane & MacLeod, 2021). Eight children in the present study were also in the previous study at age 3 years old (Meziane & MacLeod, 2021). This previous study described an influence between the languages that resulted in a positive transfer for the consonant accuracy of consonants shared by both languages.…”

“…Research on bilingual phonological development has highlighted interaction effects between languages. Phenomena of acceleration and deceleration are described when analyzing bilingual phonological development (e.g., Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2010;Meziane & MacLeod, 2021). The acceleration is observed by a better consonantal accuracy for consonants shared by both languages (e.g., Meziane & MacLeod, 2021).…”

“…Phenomena of acceleration and deceleration are described when analyzing bilingual phonological development (e.g., Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2010;Meziane & MacLeod, 2021). The acceleration is observed by a better consonantal accuracy for consonants shared by both languages (e.g., Meziane & MacLeod, 2021). The deceleration is observed by a lower consonantal accuracy for the consonants specific to each language of the bilingual child, and by using specific phonemes from one language in the other language (e.g., Meziane & MacLeod, 2021).…”

“…In addition, research that focuses on simultaneous bilingual children is needed as previous work has tended to focus on sequential bilingual children (Cooperson et al, 2013). We conducted a first study on the phonological development of three-year-old simultaneous bilingual Arabic-French children (Meziane & MacLeod, 2021). Eight children in the present study were also in the previous study at age 3 years old (Meziane & MacLeod, 2021).…”

“…As with monolingual children, there is variability in language acquisition in bilingual children (Davison, 2009). Several internal and external factors influence bilingual development in general: interaction between languages (e.g., Meziane & MacLeod, 2021), the age of language acquisition, the amount of language exposure, the relationship between the languages of learning, the social context of language acquisition, and the social status of the language (Birdsong, 2006). The amount of language exposure is reported to affect language dominance (Cooperson, Bedore & Peña, 2013).…”