Patterns of cluster reduction in the acquisition of #sC onsets: Are bilinguals different from monolinguals?

Abstract

This article is a comparative look at the cluster reduction patterns of English #sC onsets in three groups of children. Data from 40 monolingual, 40 Spanish–English bilingual and 40 Haitian Creole–English bilingual children were examined. While there were several similarities in the patterns exhibited by the three groups, there was a sharp contrast regarding /sl-/ clusters between monolingual children and the two groups of bilinguals. Among the predictions offered for reduction patterns in recent literature, ‘factorial typology’ of ) appeared to be the most successful.

• cluster reduction
• acquisition of #sC onsets
• monolingual vs. bilingual children