The development of segmental phonological production in a bilingual child: A contrasting second case

A longitudinal diary-and-videotape study of the production of phonological segments by a Spanish-English bilingual child, age 1;6-4;6, revealed a consistent separation of the phonological systems of the two languages from the earliest period, with minimal interference at later times. These results are in contrast to results obtained from another child in a similar study (Schnitzer & Krasinski, 1994). The relevance of these data to the issue of whether bilingual children first use a single system before acquiring two discrete languages is discussed, as is the general question of how to interpret the early phonological production of bilinguals.