Abstract
Studies of English and German find that children tend to acquire word-final consonant clusters before word-initial consonant clusters. This order of acquisition is generally attributed to articulatory, frequency and/or morphological factors. This contrasts with recent experimental findings from French, where two-year-olds were better at producing word-initial than word-final clusters (Demuth & Kehoe, 2006). The purpose of the present study was to examine French-speaking children's longitudinal acquisition of clusters to determine if these results replicate developmentally. Analysis of spontaneous speech productions from two French-speaking children between one and three years confirmed the earlier acquisition of initial clusters, even when sonority factors were controlled. The findings suggest that French-speaking children acquire complexity at the beginnings of words before complexity appears word-finally. The role of frequency, morphological, structural and input factors is discussed.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 425-448 |
Number of pages | 24 |
Journal | Journal of Child Language |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2009 |
Externally published | Yes |