Abstract
This study investigates the acquisition of two-element word-initial consonant clusters in 27 Norwegian children aged 21–36 months. We have focussed on clusters starting with a sibilant (S-clusters), comparing them with clusters without a sibilant (non-S-clusters). Overall, non-S-clusters were mastered more successfully than S-clusters – mainly related to the fact that the younger children (>30 months) performed much better on the non-S-clusters than on the S-clusters – this difference had disappeared in the older age group. Concerning S-clusters, sonority does not seem to play an important role for acquisition neither in terms of the sonority sequencing principle nor sonority distance. Homorganicity may be a factor for a subset of the S-clusters: /sn/ clusters are mastered clearly better than /sm/ clusters. However, frequency may also play a role here. Finally, deletion patterns differ between S-clusters and non-S-clusters: in S-clusters, deletion of the sibilant (C1) is the predominant pattern, while in non-S-clusters, C2 is the one deleted.
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Notes
1 This explanation only holds for /sm/ vs /sn/ and /
/, since /s
/ involves both lingual and labial articulatory movement. However, there are very few forms with /s
/ in our data, and many of these were produced by the older children (probably due to the fact that many of the younger children didn't know the test items). Only more data on /sς/ will resolve this problem.
2 NoTa–Norsk talespråkskorpus – Norwegian spoken language corpus (http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/nota/oslo/index.html). The corpus, which is continually growing, in October 2006 contained approximately 900 000 words, and consists of both interviews and informal conversations.