Purpose: We examined initial consonant deletion among bilingual (Spanish–English) children with speech sound disorder by comparing errors on Spanish–English cognates, providing a level of phonological control across languages. Method: Participants included 12 children between the ages of 4 and 6 years. Half were bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking children, and half were matched monolingual English-speaking children, all with speech sound disorder. Participants completed single-word speech production tasks, including articulation tests and a list of English–Spanish cognates. Results: No monolingual English-speaking children omitted initial consonants. Bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking children omitted some initial consonants in both languages. Bilingual children who omitted initial consonants in one form of a cognate produced the initial consonant in the other language. Conclusions: Initial consonant deletion may be more common in Spanish-dominant bilingual children than in monolingual English-speaking children. Clinicians who include error type analysis in their assessments should carefully consider error typicality in both of the child's languages when working with bilingual children.
Roepke et al. (Thu,) studied this question.