Alternatively, the observed asymmetry in phonological acquisition may
be a result of the sociolinguistic situation in Wales, with English as the domi-
nant language and Welsh the minority language. Thus, the children from
English-only homes are unlikely to have received Welsh-language input prior
to Welsh-medium education. Children from Welsh-only homes, on the other
hand, would typically be exposed to English from early on via the media,
friends or neighbours. This interpretation is consistent with Vihman et al.’s
(2007) study on word form recognition in monolingual Welsh-speaking chil-
dren, monolingual English-speaking children and bilingual children growing
up with both languages, as well as with growing evidence from lexical and
grammatical acquisition which suggests that bilingual children attain high
levels of proficiency in the dominant language, that is, English, regardless of
home language background, whereas attainment levels in the minority lan-
guage, that is, Welsh are directly dependent on degree of input at home and
at school (Gathercole & Thomas, 2009).
Substitution patterns
Where clusters were not target-like, they mostly involved reductions in
the younger children, and simplifications in the older ones, much like in
previous studies (McLeod et al., 2001). Most of the reductions conformed to
the SSP. Thus, clusters consisting of a stop or fricative followed by a sonorant
involved omission of the sonorant, yielding a maximal rise in sonority from
the syllable onset to its nucleus. Similarly, clusters consisting of /s/ + stop
were reduced to stops, and three-way clusters of the type /s/ + stop + sonorant
predominantly involved omission of the sonorant. Welsh-specific
/g/ + /w/ + sonorant clusters, in turn, exhibited a number of reduction pat-
terns. Although target-like realisations of these clusters do not conform to
the SSP, many of the children’s realisations did; /gwl/, for instance, was
realised as [g] or [gl].
On the other hand, a number of cluster reductions failed to conform to
the SSP: /gwr/, for instance, involved reduction to [gw], perhaps because /r/
is acquired later than /w/ (Munro et al., 2005). Likewise, /xw/ was realised
as [w] by younger children, probably because the fricative is a later acquired
segment than the glide. Note that in older children, /xw/ was reduced to [x]
in conformity with the SSP. Finally, /gwn/ was mostly realised as [n],
although retention of the stop would have yielded a greater rise in sonority.
However, in conversational Welsh, [n] is a common realisation, for example,
gwneud as [neɪd]. Consequently, the children’s reduction pattern may be a
truthful reflection of the input they received.
The substitution patterns also provided evidence for language-specific
differences in the realisation of clusters shared by Welsh and English. The
incidence of these was relatively low, though, with mostly similar reduction
and simplification patterns in the two languages. Where language-specific
differences were found, they involved clusters containing /r/. Recall that
22 Part 1: Bilingual Speech