Spoken languages vary enormously in their phonology and phonetics – which characteristics of speech they use to create and distinguish words, and exactly how these are pronounced. The nonwords in the CL-NWR are designed to be compatible with languages whatever range of vowels and consonants they use; whether they use consonants syllable-finally or only syllable-initially; whether they use consonants in clusters of one or more or only singly; and whether they use tone, or stress pattern, or neither.

Nonword items

The CL-NWR consists of 16 items. These contain 2-5 syllables, with four items at each length. All syllables are simple CV structures using the three vowels /a/, /i/, /u/and the consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /s/, /z/, /l/, /m/, /n/ which are most widely attested across languages. Syllables are produced with the same pitch and duration apart from a pitch fall on the final syllable used to mark the end of an utterance in many (though not all) languages. For each item, 4-6 candidates are provided in case one or more of these is a real word in the language or contains a consonant that is not present in the language.

While the test is designed to minimise bias towards any language or language type, it is impossible to rule out bias. For example, languages vary in word length: monosyllabic forms are typical or very frequent in some, but rare or non-existent in others. Since phonotactic frequency is the frequency of co-occurrence of phonemes in words of a language, the phonotactic frequency of consonant-vowel combinations in the nonwords will be higher in some languages than others. Prosody varies between languages: some reduce unstressed syllables, while others have even syllable duration, so the prosody of test items may be closer to some languages than others. Since the nonwords are made up of high-frequency vowels and consonants, constituent syllables are likely to be real words or real morphemes in some languages but may not be in others. Whether these crosslinguistic differences in lexical phonology bias the CL-NWR items towards or against different languages is an empirical question. We are currently collating data on the crosslinguistic task from approximately 1800 children collected in 13 countries to investigate consistency of performance across languages, and whether this justifies the establishment of multilingual norms.

However, the best way to address this question is to use the same recordings across language populations and countries, ensuring that any differences in performance are not due to differences in the recordings used. This was one of the reasons for creating the language-neutral recording of the CL-NWR.

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Presentation

The CL-NWR is presented on PowerPoint using a bead game in which each bead carries the sound file for one of the 16 nonwords and is added to a necklace chain after the child repeats the ‘magic word’. This presentation has proved very engaging for young children because they can see their progress as the beads build up the necklace.

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Recordings

Language-neutral: These recordings of all candidate items in the CL-NWR were created for universal use. Where there is crosslinguistic variation in the pronunciation of constituent vowels and consonants (e.g. in height, front/backness, and tensing of the three vowels; in voice onset time of plosives), intermediate points on the relevant phonetic dimension are used. This universal resource ensures consistency in the quality of recordings administered and therefore allows for comparison of performance across language groups and research studies.

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Local recordings: Alternatively, users can make their own recordings of the 16 items with the vowels and consonants pronounced as they would be in their language or accent, and attach the sound files for these items to the bead presentation.

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CL-NWR Test Materials

A complete PowerPoint presentation of the CL-NWR with language-neutral recordings of the 16 items is available for universal use.

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To put together a PowerPoint presentation for your own selection of candidate items, you will need the following:

• Table of the candidate nonwords for the 16 items in the CL-NWR: For each item, select the first nonword amongst the candidates that is compatible with the language.

• Scoresheet with each item identified by its number: Next to each number on the scoresheet, enter the nonword you have selected for that item number.

• Language-neutral recordings of all candidate items: If you are using these, select the sound file for each of the 16 items you have selected.

• PowerPoint presentation of the bead game: Attach the 16 sound files (language-neutral, or your own recordings) to the 16 beads in the same order as the scoresheet.

• Instructions for administration and scoring: The procedures for administration and scoring of the CL-NWR are the same whichever recordings you use.

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All test materials can be obtained by emailing Kamila Polišenská at kamila.polisenska@manchester.ac.uk

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How to cite CL-NWR tests

If you use the bead game presentation with language-neutral recordings, please cite as:

Chiat, S., Polišenská, K., Yanushevskaya, I., & Antonijevic, S. (2020). Language Neutral Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test (CL-NWR).

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If you use the bead game presentation with your own recordings of items from the framework, please cite as:

[Your names], Polišenská, K. & Chiat., S. (Year). The Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test: [Language] version.

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For example:

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Chan, A., Kan, R., Kwan, E., Polišenská, K. & Chiat, S. (2020). Cantonese Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test.

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If you use the bead presentation as developed by Polišenská & Kapalková (2014), please cite: 

Polišenská, K., & Kapalková, S. (2014). Improving Child Compliance on a Computer-Administered Nonword Repetition Task. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 57(3), 1060-1068.

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When you refer to the CL-NWR framework, please cite:

Chiat, S. (2015). Nonword Repetition. In S. Armon-Lotem, J. de Jong, & N. Meir (Eds.), Methods for assessing multilingual children: Disentangling bilingualism from language impairment. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.