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Deposit Guide Contact: email Phonological Acquisition and development in Arabic- English Bilingual Children Asma Alamer Student ID: 12801661 Supervisors 1st Supervisor - Professor Zhu Hua 2nd Supervisor - Professor Marjorie Lorch A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in TESOL Birkbeck Collage, University of London June 2018 I Declaration I declare that the thesis submitted is my own work and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. Asma Alamer 5-6-2018 II Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the contribution of my three special participants. I would like to express my gratitude and endless appreciation to their mothers who dedicated their time in eliciting and recording their children speech for one year. At one point or another, I almost lost hope of completing this thesis. Giving birth to two children while immersing myself in the process of analyzing and writing was almost an impossible mission. Thus, towards the end it felt that I have finally giving birth to my third child. I was very fortunate to have a supervisor like Prof. Zhu whose support and encouragements were valuable. The support that I received from my supervisor was not merely academic; at times of despair and self-doubt she would restore my self-confidence with her kind words and encouragements. Special thanks goes to my mother, father and husband who at times put every thing on hold just to come and support me. Moreover, the prayers of my grandmother always echo in my air and gave me strength against all odds. Finally I am grateful to my two children who have been my greatest joy and company throughout this long and at times desolate journey. III Abstract The main aim of this thesis is to explore the effect of cross-linguistic interaction on the phonological acquisition and development of simultaneous pre-school bilingual children. Data sample comprise of elicited single words and spontaneous speech obtained for three children acquiring English and Arabic languages and recorded by their mothers at home on a monthly basis for a period of one year. The extent of cross-linguistic interaction between the bilingual children's two language was examined through three manifestations: (a) transfer; (b) delay; and (c) acceleration (Paradis & Genesee, 1996) against consonant accuracy PCC, phonemic repertoire, and error patterns. Findings revealed evidence of cross-linguistic interaction through transfer and acceleration at variable degrees across the participants. For transfer, bi-directional transfer was observed in the production of the phoneme /r/ by two of the participants, while unidirectional transfer was more frequent and influenced the production of the following phonemes; /r/, /l/, /ɫ/ and /ŋ/. The directionality of transfer and its frequency corresponded to language exposure patterns the children were exposed to. Acceleration was observed in segmental inventories of shared and unshared sounds. One of the participants had an accelerated inventory of shared sound cross-linguistically when she was less than three years. Conversely, the other participants reported an accelerated segmental inventory in Arabic of unshared sounds over the age of three. In addition, acceleration of the PCC scores in both languages was evident in the results of one of the participants who received amble language exposure in both languages. Delay on the other hand was not found to be a manifestation of interaction and was the result of insufficient language exposure received in the participants' concerned languages. This was also the case of error pattern in which its frequency is contingent on the amount of language exposure received. Longitudinally, interaction either decreased or resolved demonstrating the boosting mechanism of interaction that could manifest at varying degrees during acquisition. The main contribution of this thesis, apart from its being the first longitudinal exploration of English/Arabic simultaneous preschool bilingual children in the UK, is the positive effect of a certain threshold of language exposure across the bilinguals' languages in promoting higher accuracy and larger segmental inventory in comparison to their age matched monolinguals. IV Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ II Abstract ................................................................................................................................. III Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ IV List of Tables .................................................................................................................... VIII List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ V 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Concepts and Definitions ......................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Bilingual first language acquisition research: Theoretical background ............................ 4 1.2.1 One vs. two phonological systems ................................................................................ 4 1.2.1.1 Unitary Language Model (ULM) .................................................................... 4 1.2.1.2 Dual Language System Hypothesis (DLS) ...................................................... 7 1.2.2 Cross-linguistic Interaction ......................................................................................... 10 1.2.2.1 Manifestations of cross-linguistic interaction ................................................. 10 1.2.2.2 Influential factors ............................................................................................ 16 1. Linguistic domain ...................................................................................... 17 2. Language dominance ................................................................................. 18 3. Cross-linguistic structural differences ....................................................... 20 4. Input ........................................................................................................... 21 5. Individual variations .................................................................................. 21 1.2.3 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 22 2 Phonological Acquisition: Monolingual- vs. Bilingual-Speaking Children ................. 24 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 24 2.2 Phonological systems of English and Arabic languages .................................................... 25 2.2.1 English ........................................................................................................................ 25 2.2.2 Arabic .......................................................................................................................... 27 2.2.3 Cross-linguistic comparison between English and Arabic phonological systems ...... 29 2.3 Monolingual and bilingual phonological acquisition ......................................................... 31 2.3.1 Monolingual acquisition ............................................................................................. 32 2.3.1.1 Phonemic inventory ........................................................................................ 31 2.3.1.2 Error patterns .................................................................................................. 41 2.3.2 Bilingual acquisition ................................................................................................... 45 2.3.2.1 Phonemic inventory ........................................................................................ 47 2.3.2.2 Error patterns .................................................................................................. 55 2.3.3 Research questions ...................................................................................................... 56 3 Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 57 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 57 3.2 Participants ............................................................................................................................. 57 3.2.1 MF ..............................................................................................................................