Assessing the link between phonology and lexical development in French-Portuguese bilingual toddlers
Résumé
Many studies have shown a relationship between phonology and vocabulary in monolingual children (e.g. Chiat & Roy, 2007) by focusing mainly on phonological memory and lexical size (Bowey, 2001). In Spanish-English bilingual toddlers, Parra, Hoff, and Core (2011) found that the performance in phonology was positively correlated with vocabulary size. To assess phonology, they used a Nonword Repetition (NWR) task and the Percentage of Consonants Correct was chosen as a measure of accuracy. To our knowledge, no such study has been conducted with French- and Portuguese-speaking toddlers. Therefore, we adapted the NWR task proposed by Parra, Hoff and Core (2011) to French and Portuguese and used it with 21 French-Portuguese bilingual children (10 girls, 11 boys) aged 30-35 months. Participants were selected according to the following inclusion criteria: (1) typical development (according to the ASQ-3), (2) exposure to French and Portuguese since birth, (3) singleton birth, and (4) full term. 15 of these 21 children were part of a longitudinal study and were also tested at the age of 24-25 months using the Communicative Development Inventory - words and sentences - for French and Portuguese, and a Picture Naming and a Word Repetition task). The Questionnaire for Parents of Bilingual Children (PaBiQ; Tuller, 2015) was used to assess language exposure. The NWR task was created for each language to measure children's phonological memory and phonological production. All sessions were videotaped and transcribed using Phon (Rose & McWhinney, 2014). Results showed a strong association between NWR scores and vocabulary size. NWR is also strongly linked to Word Repetition. However, this link is mediated by language dominance (French-dominant children perform better on the French NWR version). Finally, for French-speaking toddlers, NWR performance is positively correlated with phonological accuracy in spontaneous speech. This link is weaker for Portuguese. Methodological issues will be discussed.