Variation in the application of natural processes: language-dependent constraints in the phonological acquisition of bilingual children

This paper studies phonological processes and constraints on early phonological and lexical development, as well as the strategies employed by a young Spanish-, Portuguese-, and Hebrew-speaking child-Nurit (the author's niece)-in the construction of her early lexicon. Nurit's linguistic development is compared to that of another Spanish-, Portuguese-, and Hebrew-speaking child-Noam (the author's son). Noam and Nurit's linguistic development is contrasted to that of Berman's (1977) English- and Hebrew-speaking daughter (Shelli). The simultaneous acquisition of similar (closely related languages) such as Spanish and Portuguese versus that of nonrelated languages such as English and Hebrew yields different results: Children acquiring similar languages seem to prefer maintenance as a strategy for the construction of their early lexicon, while children exposed to nonrelated languages appear to prefer reduction to a large extent (Faingold, 1990). The Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking children's high accuracy stems from a wider choice of target words, where the diachronic development of two closely related languages provides a simplified model lexicon to the child.