Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language: evidence from English and Norwegian

Nina Gram Garmann,Hanne Gram Simonsen,Elisabeth Holm,Elinor Payne,Pernille Hansen,Brechtje Post

doi:10.1017/s0305000920000069

Abstract

Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, Garmann & Kristoffersen, 2019). To investigate the extent to which children use this strategy to differing degrees depending on the ambient language, we analysed word initial cluster production acoustically in nine Norwegian and nine English speaking children aged 2;6-6 years, and eight adults, four from each language. The results showed that Norwegian-speaking children produce significantly more instances of vocalic insertions than English-speaking children do. The same pattern is found in Norwegian- versus English-speaking adults. We argue that this cross-linguistic difference is an example of the influence of prosodic-phonetic biases in language-specific developmental paths in the acquisition of speech.

Highlights

When infants learn to speak, they need to master a complex combination of knowledge and skills simultaneously
We found that in Norwegian, 30.6% (n = 55) of the clusters had a clear or a relatively clear vocalic insertion, while only one of the clusters in English were of realisation type a (0.6%) and none were of realisation type b
The comparison of initial clusters in English and Norwegian adult speech clearly demonstrates that, English has a close transition, while Norwegian has an open transition between the consonants

Summary

Introduction

When infants learn to speak, they need to master a complex combination of knowledge and skills simultaneously Their developmental path will be shaped by universal constraints on speech production and perception imposed by vocal tract dynamics, audition, and neurophysiology, all of which are still very much in flux in the developing child (Bernthal & Beukelman, 1978; Stathopoulos & Sapienza, 1993; Koenig, 2000; Imbrie, 2005). A type of language-specific structural constraint which has been largely overlooked in previous research on acquisition is a specific language’s patterns of gestural co-ordination, resulting from biases (or dominant tendencies) in how adult speakers phonetically implement the phonological contrasts and structures of that language (Payne, Post, Garmann & Simonsen, 2015; Payne, 2016). Cluster acquisition is of particular interest because both reduction and vocalic insertion are reported cross-linguistically as strategies for cluster production in early speech, albeit to different extents across languages

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