Phonemic and pitch variability in bilingual preschoolers: A comparison of Jamaican Creole and English.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the cross-linguistic influences of Jamaican Creole (JC) and English on phonemic and vocal development in bilingual JC-English-speaking preschoolers.

Method: Sixteen typically developing children (12 females,  = 4 years; 4 months) completed the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation in Phonology Word Inconsistency Assessment subtest in JC and in English. Acoustic measures of voice onset time (VOT), VOT variability (VOT ), mean fundamental frequency (), and variability ( ) were extracted from each target word.