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This study focuses on a trilingual toddler's ability to differentiate her Tagalog, Spanish and English productions on phonological/phonetic grounds. Working within the articulatory phonology framework, the word-initial segments produced by the child in Tagalog, Spanish and English words at age 1;10 were narrowly transcribed by two researchers and her accuracy levels in employing/reproducing the specific gestural properties of word-initial consonants (e.g. constricting organ, location, degree and glottal gestures) were compared across languages. The child's phonetic inventories in each language were also compared to those produced by monolingual peers to assess whether trilingual exposure had any consequence on phonological production. The results indicate that the child's accuracy levels in word-initial segments differed significantly from language to language reflecting distinct levels of phonological development. The child's performance with organ and location was indeed higher in her stronger language(s), while success in reproducing constriction degree tended to be greater in those languages with a larger variety of fricatives. The child also produced a variety of language-specific phonemes that went beyond the average monolingual inventory, suggesting that multilingual exposure might lead to a heightened attention towards the phonological properties of these languages, thereby enhancing phonological production.
