The phonological acquisition of Cantonese-Putonghua bilingual children

Bilingual children start to separate the phonological systems of their two languages at around two years of age. Watson (1991) suggests that there are three possible outcomes in the phonological systems of balanced bilinguals. The bilinguals may have: (1) two independent phonological systems that are the same as those of the monolinguals, (2) some integration of the two systems, or (3) two systems that differ from those of monolinguals. In successive bilinguals, the influence of one language over the other is more than that in balanced bilinguals. Research has focused on the relationship between age of learning and native-like phonological competence (Scovel, 1988; Patknowski, 1994; Yavas, 1998), and on phonological interference between the two languages acquired..