Voice Onset Time (VOT) is an acoustic measure widely used to measure the characteristics of plosives across various languages. This study investigates the acquisition of voicing contrast in Malay word-initial plosives produced by Mandarin-speaking children. Fifteen subjects between the ages of 3;00 to 7 and 11 were recruited. The children completed a picture-naming task, and the speech samples were audio-recorded and analyzed using PRAAT. Descriptive VOT values (ms) across ages were presented and compared to previous normative findings. Results revealed that children aged 3;00 produced only a short lag, while children aged 4;00 to 6;00 produced short lag-long lag contrast, which is not similar to the expected VOT pattern of Malay plosives. Additionally, with increasing age, children acquired adult-like VOT productions. The VOT distributions follow the developmental path proposed for languages with two-way contracts. This finding is the first VOT data on Malay word-initial plosives by Mandarin-speaking children. Maturity of motor development and coordination, as well as cross-linguistic exposure, influenced productions. Thus, further studies examining cross-linguistic influence, particularly controlling for the duration of exposure to L2 in multilingual language acquisition with a larger sample size, are warranted to validate the findings from this study.

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