Temporal co-ordination of consonants in the speech of children: further data

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English monosyllables were elicited from five adults, from seven children aged 4 to 7 years, and from six of these children, plus a younger child, 14 months later. The durations of clustered and unclustered consonants were measured oscillographically, and patterns of durational change for segments in similar phonetic contexts were compared for the three speaker groups. All common word-initial clusters of English were included. Overall, more mature speakers imposed more organization upon the segments of consonant clusters: the younger child group resembled the adults less than the older group did, with the latter resembling each of the other groups about equally. Within this general pattern, several factors influenced the maturity of production of particular clusters: in older children, manner of articulation of the whole sequence and place of articulation of individual segments were the strongest determinants of maturity of execution, whereas the cluster’s size (two vs three segments), and whether it was homorganic or nonhomorganic, appeared to be more influential with the younger children. The children generally appeared to change gradually towards the adult norm with age, but the patterns of modification for some clusters, notably those involving voiceless stops, moved away from the adult pattern in the older children’s speech.