On the acquisition of Hebrew #sC onsets

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of sonority in the acquisition of initial /s/-clusters in Hebrew. Data were collected from forty typically developing Hebrew-speaking children between the ages of 1;10 and 3;0. The data were elicited by means of a picture-naming task combined with a sentence completion task. Target words consisted of complex onsets, including #sC clusters. Results revealed that no significant differences were found between the correct productions of different sub-groups among the /s/-clusters. There were no differences in the correct productions of #sC in relation to different C2's or between the productions of SSP-violating clusters and the SSP-following clusters. The only distinction that did emerge was the separate distribution of ‘/s/ + [−continuant]’ versus ‘/s/ + [+continuant]’, a result that supports previous findings for the role of continuity and sonority in the deletion patterns of clusters.

Keywords:

• Sonority
• s-clusters
• acquisition
• Hebrew

Notes

1 /s/-clusters, i.e., clusters beginning with sibilant consonants. C1 in /s/- clusters in Hebrew can be any of the sibilants in the language: /s, z, ts, /.

2 These restrictions are seldom violated (e.g., /vu'da/ ‘pink (fm.)’, /xnun/ ‘nerd’, /spot/ ‘sport’).