Aims and objectives:

This study investigates the acquisition of Setswana speech rhythm, considered to be typically syllable-timed, by early sequential Setswana–English bilingual children aged 6–7 years old growing up in Botswana, a country with a diglossic setting, where English is the dominant high-status language in educational and public contexts. For this group of children, taught full-time in English from the age of 3 years, the L2 becomes their dominant language through exposure to English-medium education. The aim was to ascertain if the prosodic patterns of Setswana spoken by the bilingual children are similar to those of the monolingual children or if English, considered to be stress-timed, has an effect on these prosodic features.

Data and analysis:

The speech rhythm patterns of 10 Setswana–English bilingual children were compared with those of 10 age-matched Setswana monolingual children educated in public schools for whom English is a learner language. The study primarily examines spontaneous speech from the telling of a wordless picture storybook, and utilises rhythm metrics nPVI-V and Varco V to examine the speech rhythm of the children.

Findings:

The results showed that the prosodic pattern of Setswana in the bilingual group diverged from that of the non-bilingual group.

Originality:

This is the first such study on speech rhythm in bilingual children in Setswana.

Significance:

The research provides evidence in this population of effects from English bilingualism on L1 Setswana speech prosody, and challenges the assumption that speech rhythm prosody is established early in life, especially when the language is a less marked, syllable-timed language like Setswana.

中文翻译：

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6-7岁的Setswana-英语双语儿童的Setswana语音节律

目的和目标：

这项研究调查了早起的Setswana –年龄在6岁至7岁之间的英语双语孩子在一个博茨瓦纳（Botswana）这个偏僻的国家，其中英语是占主导地位的国家，这种语言通常被定为音节定时，从而获得Setswana语音节律教育和公共场合的状态语言。对于这组从3岁开始全日制英语授课的儿童，L2通过接受英语中等教育而成为他们的主要语言。目的是确定双语儿童说的Setswana的韵律模式是否与单语孩子的相似，或者英语是否被认为是有压力的，是否会对这些韵律特征产生影响。

数据与分析：

比较了10名Setswana-英语双语儿童的言语节奏模式与10名年龄相匹配的Setswana单语言儿童的言语节奏模式，这些儿童是在英语学校学习的公立学校。该研究主要从无语图画故事书的讲述中检查自发性言语，并利用nPVI-V和Varco V的节奏指标来检查儿童的言语节奏。

发现：

结果表明，双语人群中塞斯瓦纳的韵律模式与非双语人群中的韵律模式不同。

独创性：

这是Setswana对双语儿童言语节律的首次研究。

意义：

该研究为英语双语对塞斯瓦纳L1语音韵律的影响提供了证据，并挑战了语音节奏韵律在生命早期就建立的假设，特别是当该语言是Setswana等标记较少，音节时间较短的语言时。