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

Clin Linguist Phon. 2011 Nov;25(11-12):981-8. doi: 10.3109/02699206.2011.616643.

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 Pater and Barlow (2003 ) appeared to be the most successful.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study

MeSH terms

  • Child
  • Child Language
  • Child, Preschool
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Female
  • Haiti
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Language Development
  • Language*
  • Male
  • Multilingualism*
  • Phonation*
  • Phonetics*