Apparent ‘sufficiently similar’ degemination in Catalan is due to coalescence

Cameron et al. (2010) and Fruehwald & Gorman (2011) present the pattern of homorganic consonant cluster reduction in Catalan as a challenge to Baković’s (2005) theory of antigemination, which predicts that any feature ignored in the determination of consonant identity for the purposes of antigemination in a given language must independently assimilate in that language. I argue that the pattern in Catalan is not a counterexample to this prediction if the reduction process is analyzed as coalescence, following Wheeler (2005), rather than as deletion.

SYLLABLE STRUCTURE OF WORDS IN THE SPEECH OF 3-YEAR-OLDS

The way children acquire syllable structure of words characterizes the level of their speech development. It is assumed that 3=year=olds without any disorders do not have any difficulties with constructing syllables. The current paper describes the results of an acoustic study of word syllable structure in the speech of twenty Russian 3=year=old subjects. 75% of them demonstrated from 3 to 7 syllable structure changes. The maximum of 13,2% of the total of 53 words were characterized by those changes. There were examples of word-initial single-consonant elision, syllable elision, syllable transposition, sounds transposition, insertions of hard and soft forelingual /l/ and /lʲ/ into a syllable, and anticipation. Consonant cluster reduction was also noticed; it did not change the number of syllables in words. Clusters that were more and less resistant to reduction were determined.

Variable and Stable Clusters: Variation in the Realisation of Consonant Clusters

This article reports on between-individual and within-individual variation in consonant cluster reduction strategies (where C1C2 is realised as C( or C2) among young children. The empirical base of the study is a Dutch database with over 9,000 instances of C1 and C2 realisations of 23 word-initial consonant clusters from 45 children aged between two and three years old. The study finds that within-child variation is very limited, whereas between-child variation occurs. It is also shown that there are typological implications; that is, realising C2 in cluster y, implies realising C2 in cluster y, but not vice versa. The data provide support for the position that variation can be accounted for by a finer grained notion of sonority where the sonority distance between the two consonants in a cluster plays a crucial role in establishing prosodic constituency.

Consonant cluster reduction in Tejano English

ABSTRACTThis study examines the well-known process of consonant cluster reduction in the English of residents of a San Antonio, Texas, barrio. The study compares Tejano patterns of /-t, d/ deletion with the pan-English pattern summarized by Labov (1989). Results of VARBRUL analysis show that /-t, d/ deletion in Tejano English is constrained by many of the same factors as in other English dialects, including Los Angeles Chicano English. Results also suggest, however, a complex pattern of convergence and divergence. Younger Tejanos are converging toward other dialects of English with respect to the effect of the morphological class on cluster simplification. Yet there is some evidence that they are diverging from other dialects with respect to the effect of syllable stress. On this latter dimension, younger Tejanos replicate the pattern found by Santa Ana (1991) among Los Angeles Chicanos. Finally, the study compares /-t, d/ deletion in Tejano/Chicano English in San Antonio and Los Angeles and shows that, despite many similarities, Mexican American varieties exhibit regional as well as generational differences.

The Effects of Treatment on Consonant Cluster and Weak Syllable Reduction Processes in Misarticulating Children

In a multiple baseline across behaviors design, two children with articulation errors were trained to suppress the phonological processes of weak syllable reduction and consonant cluster reduction. Results of this investigation indicated that the treatment was effective in increasing correct responses on target words, and that training generalized to phonetically similar untrained words.