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16 - Acquisition of Suprasegmental Phonology in Child Bilingualism

from Part III - The Phonetics and Phonology of the Bilingual Child

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Mariia Pronina  and
Pilar Prieto
Edited by
Mark Amengual
Mark Amengual
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Summary

The aim of this chapter is to provide the state-of-the-art of the research on the development of suprasegmental phonology in bilingual children from infancy through childhood. First, we discuss word-level prosodic phenomena, with a special focus on the bilingual acquisition of word stress and syllable structure, which has been a lively area of research. We also present recent data on the acquisition of tone, which remains a less investigated topic. Second, we consider the acquisition of phrase-level prosody, namely, rhythm and intonation. For each domain of prosodic development, we briefly review monolingual patterns and discuss how learning two (or more) phonological systems can affect developmental trajectories, showing that there can be different cross-linguistic interactions such as transfer, delay, acceleration, or fusion. We also consider potential influencing factors that can trigger different tracks in the development of prosody, for example age of onset, amount of exposure, language dominance, and simultaneous or sequential language acquisition. The chapter concludes with a discussion of avenues for future research.

Keywords

bilingualfirst langugae acquisitiondevelopmentprosodyrhythmintonationtonestress
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Phonetics and Phonology , pp. 359 - 382
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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