Chapter published in:
The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Pilar Prieto and Núria Esteve-Gibert
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 23] 2018
► pp. 317–342

Chapter 16
Bilingual children’s prosodic development

| University of Hamburg

This chapter focuses on various domains of prosodic development – syllables, metrical feet, prosodic words, stress patterns, phonological phrases, intonation and rhythm – as they are acquired by bilingual children, exposed to two languages from birth: a societal or majority language and a minority or heritage language. The studies reviewed in this chapter discuss the bilingual acquisition of these prosodic domains and the influence of one language onto the other when children develop surrounded by two languages in contact. The discussion deals with the various aspects of the acquisition of prosody and prosodic structure described in the main section of the chapter, and reports on the outcomes of cross-language interaction: acceleration, delay, transfer, order of acquisition, and fusion.

Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Phonology and prosody
    • Brief excursus on optimality theory and phonological acquisition
  • Aims and structure of the present chapter
  • Bilingual acquisition of prosody
    • Bilingual acquisition of the syllable
    • Bilingual acquisition of closed syllables: Codas
    • Bilingual acquisition of complex syllables: Consonant clusters
    • Bilingual acquisition of metrical feet and stress patterns
    • Unfooted syllables: Their role in the expansion of prosody
    • Bilingual acquisition of prosodic word structures
    • Bilingual acquisition of intonation
    • Bilingual acquisition of rhythm
  • Discussion
    • Summary of results
    • Various outcomes of bilingual prosodic acquisition
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.23.16lle
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