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Consonant clusters in child phonology and the directionality of syllable structure assignment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Conxita Lleó  and
Michael Prinz
Conxita Lleó*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
Michael Prinz*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
*
Ibero-Amerikanisches Forschungsinstitut, Universität Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 6, VI, 20146 Hamburg, Germany. E-mail: lleo@rrz.uni-hamburg.de.
Ibero-Amerikanisches Forschungsinstitut, Universität Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 6, VI, 20146 Hamburg, Germany. E-mail: lleo@rrz.uni-hamburg.de.
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Abstract

The production of target consonant clusters at early stages of acquisition is analysed from a phonological representational perspective. The data stem from five normal monolingual German and four normal monolingual Spanish children at ages from 0;9 to 2;1, observed in naturalistic settings. At the beginning stages, target clusters are reduced to a single consonantal position, due to lack of branching of the syllabic constituents. This finding coincides with other results in the literature, which have in general been explained by means of universal principles. Nevertheless, there is an essential difference between the German and the Spanish data: German children tend to prefer the first consonant and Spanish children the second one. This difference can only be explained in terms of parameterization of syllabification, which in German takes place from left to right and in Spanish from right to left. At later stages, when clusters begin to be produced with two consonantal positions, they offer evidence for the beginning of branching of syllabic constituents, due to parameterization, and for the chronological order of the setting of the subsyllabic parameters. Our data offer evidence in favour of the following acquisitional hierarchy: CV > CVC > CVCC > CCVCC.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1996 , pp. 31 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

[*]

The investigation reported here was carried out within the German project PAIDUS (Parameter Fixing in German and Spanish) supported by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (LI 3/2–3) to the first author. We appreciate the co-operation of all people involved in the project: the children and their parents, the research assistant, Christliebe El Mogharbel, who conducted the recording sessions and supervised the transcriptions, the students, who collaborated in the recordings and transcriptions, as well as the Spanish research team of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, led by Antonio Maldonado.

References

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