Medial Consonant Clusters in 2 1/2-Year-Old Children

This paper investigates 2 1/2-year-old Finnish children's abilities to produce heterosyllabic two-consonant clusters. 15 normally developing monolingual Finnish-speaking children's (nine girls, six boys) everyday interactions with their caregivers (mothers) were videotaped in order to find out which heterosyllabic consonant clusters these children were targeting, how well these consonant clusters were produced, which consonant clusters occurred & what phonological processes were perceived. Although the children targeted altogether 50 different heterosyllabic clusters & produced on average nine clusters, there was still a lot of variation between the children. Some children did not produce any heterosyllabic clusters whereas the most advanced children produced as many as 19 consonant clusters. Correctly produced clusters were most often homorganic clusters that included a nasal & a stop (/mp/, /nt/) & heterorganic /hm/ & /sk/-clusters. The most common phonological processes were compensatory lengthening, substitution & assimilation. Adapted from the source document