Cluster reductions in atypical child Greek: A constraint based analysis

Ploumidi, Eirini

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/118069 Copy

Description

Title

Cluster reductions in atypical child Greek: A constraint based analysis

Author(s)

Ploumidi, Eirini

Issue Date

2023-05-19

Keyword(s)

Linguistics

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of rising, falling and plateau sonority clusters based on cross-sectional data of Greek-speaking children diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder. The data show that cluster simplification takes the shape of cluster reduction. Rising sonority clusters are reduced to the leftmost consonant and falling and plateau sonority clusters are reduced to the rightmost consonant. In this study, it is claimed that cluster acquisition is based on headedness and constituency and that children have adult-like cluster representations; rising sonority clusters are represented as head-dependent sequences and falling and plateau sonority clusters are represented as appendix-head sequences. Thus, cluster reduction results in the realization of the head of the target cluster. The preservation of the head reflects a grammatical requirement, i.e. the head as the fundamental constituent of the target cluster should be in correspondence between the input and the output form. Regarding the faithful cluster realizations, the appendix-head sequences are faithfully realized more frequently compared to the head-dependent ones. Nevertheless, the acquisition of the appendix-head sequences provides evidence that the sequences which consist of non-identical consonants with respect to the manner of articulation, i.e. falling sonority clusters, are acquired earlier than the ones which consist of identical consonants with respect to the [+/- continuant] manner feature, i.e. plateau sonority clusters. The difference in the order of acquisition of falling and plateau sonority clusters is attributed to the effects of the Obligatory Contour Principle, which blocks the adjacency of consonants with the same manner feature in the output. The falling sonority clusters are immune to these effects since they consist of non-identical consonants with respect to manner. On the contrary, the plateau sonority clusters show strong effects of the Obligatory Contour Principle.

Publisher

Studies in the Linguistic Sciences: Illinois Working Papers

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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