Initial Consonant Deletion on Cognates: A Preliminary Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Speech Errors Among Bilingual Children With Speech Sound Disorders

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.