make use of the post-alveolar approximant, and instead use trilled realisations
in all instances. Other speakers, on the other hand, may use the post-alveolar
approximant in both languages (Jones, 1984). Cross-linguistic interactions of
this kind are not surprising and have been widely documented in language
contact situations (Bullock & Gerfen, 2005). As a result, for the purposes of
the present study, children’s productions of clusters containing rhotics were
scored as correct if they included any of the variants of /r/ that are acceptable
in the adult language.
Two words were selected to represent each word-initial cluster, yielding
a total of 60 Welsh words and 58 English words. Words were chosen with
which young children were expected to be familiar and which could be elic-
ited via pictorial representation. A few loanwords from English were included
in the Welsh set since they were fully integrated into the Welsh language and
could be found in a standard Welsh dictionary (Evans & Thomas, 2008).
Only non-mutated word forms were included in the Welsh word list since
mutation constitutes a separate aspect of Welsh language acquisition.
Mutations are a characteristic of Celtic languages and involve morpho-
phonological changes that affect the initial consonants of words (Ball &
Müller, 1992; Thomas & Gathercole, 2007). Thus, for instance, /braʊd/
(brother) may change to /vraʊd/ or /mraʊd/ in certain syntactic contexts.
Procedure and analysis
Data collection took place in individual sessions in a quiet room on the
premises of the participating schools and nurseries. Each child was seen
twice, once in a Welsh setting and once in an English setting. The two ses-
sions were normally conducted on different days. Recordings were made
using a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder with integrated microphone, which was
positioned a few centimetres from the participant’s mouth.
Speech Learning in Bilinguals 9Table 1.1 Welsh and English onset clusters included in the study
Cluster type Welsh-only English-only Shared
stop + /l/ /tl/ – /pl bl kl gl/
stop + /r/ – /dr/ /pr br tr kr gr/
stop + /w/ /gw/ /tw/ /dw kw/
stop + /n/ /kn/ – –
fricative + /l/ – – /fl sl/
fricative + /r/ – /θr ʃr/ /fr/
fricative + /w/ /xw/ – /sw/
/s/ + stop – – /sb sd sg/ (/sp st sk/)
/s/ + nasal – /sn/ /sm/
/s/ + stop + sonorant /sgl/ /spl spr/ /sgw sgr sdr/ (/skw skr str/)
/g/ + /w/ + sonorant /gwn gwr gwl/ – –