The development of English and Japanese phonology in a bilingual child aged 1 year 3 months to 1 year 8 months : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Science at Massey University

Abstract

Language used by a child between the ages of 1;3 and 1;8 was recorded while she was being brought up in a bilingual English-Japanese home environment. The words used by the child were phonologically analysed to determine whether there was any evidence for a structural theory or a frequency theory of phonological development. Evidence was found to support and to contradict each of these types of theory. It was found that either a) the child chose to attempt only words which contained a high proportion of phonemes she knew she could utter or b) the frequency of the parents' phonemes was modified from the frequency of standard adult speech when the parent was talking to the child. Little evidence of phonological interference between the two languages was observed during the course of this study.