I am a PhD Candidate in my 4th year in the Linguistics program at Boston University. My research concerns how children – both typically and atypically developing – and adults acquiring their first and second language(s) respectively navigate their way through the process of acquiring complex speech sounds found in African/Ghanaian languages. I am also interested in examining the question of how the phonetic/phonological systems of the bilingual/multilingual interact. Furthermore, I examine linguistic variation in child and adult grammar, particularly in the vocalic system of Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo). I tackle these questions by examining the processing and development of speech sounds in bilingual/multilingual contexts. I use different experimental methods to investigate the development of speech production and perception in children and adult populations in the above speech contexts.