Language experience and phonological development: a case study of a bicultural/monolingual family in Korea

Abstract

This case study investigates the influence of maternal speech on a child’s phonological acquisition of Korean consonants examining conversational speech data collected from a dyad of a Korean-speaking child (aged 3;8 – 4;1) and his Vietnamese mother - a late Korean learner - for a six-month period. Correlation of the mother’s speech accuracy and her child’s consonant production were examined. The results showed the child exhibited a delay in phonemic acquisition while his error patterns were not congruent with those of his mother. The mother’s Korean phonemic awareness was more accurate than her child’s one, and her errors in production was induced by her native language. The findings suggest that the maternal influence is not correlated with the child’s phonemic acquisition while it is still probable that his mother’s non-salient production may have led difficulties for the child to build phonological contrasts.