The Initial Development of Voice Onset Time in Early Successive French-Swedish Bilinguals

This chapter explores the initial development of VOT in three Swedish-speaking learners of French (age of onset: 3;0-3;5). Swedish uses long lag and short lag/lead to differentiate voiceless and voiced stops word-initially (Helgasson & Ringen 2008; Sundberg & Lacerda 1999). In French this distinction is made using short lag and lead (Kessinger och Blumstein 1997). Through a memory game word-initial stops were elicited in three vocalic contexts. French and Swedish productions from three recordings were analysed (at 10, 19 and 29 months of exposure). Data was also collected from age-matched simultaneous bilinguals (n = 3) and French-speaking monolinguals (n = 2). The successive bilinguals separate the two languages in the first recording. Initial French productions appear influenced by Swedish VOT but later align with the data from the monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals. The successive bilinguals’ Swedish VOT indicates a delay compared to monolingual development as reported in the literature. This was also the case for the simultaneous bilinguals. Results are discussed with regards to factors such as bilingual frequency and markedness (see Lleó & Cortés 2013).