REALIZATIONS OF CONSONANT CLUSTERS BY CHILDREN WITH PHONOLOGICAL IMPAIRMENT

Children with phonological impairment frequently have difficulty produ cing consonant clusters. Speech pathologists often use phonological pr ocesses to describe children's productions of consonant clusters, a co mmonly used description being cluster reduction. However, this descrip tion does not adequately address children's differing realizations of consonant clusters. The purpose of this paper is to develop and refine methods for the characterization of realizations of consonant cluster s. The work of Greenlee (1974) and Chin and Dinnsen (1992) has been ex tended by examining the effect of syllable position, number of element s and constituents on children's realizations of consonant clusters. S pecifically, word-initial fricative clusters, stop clusters, three ele ment fricative+stop clusters, and word-final nasal clusters and fricat ive+stop clusters were examined. The results for 40 phonologically imp aired children between the ages of 3;6 and 5;0 years are compared with those of Chin and Dinnsen (1992). The relationships found between chi ld and adult representations of clusters suggest the importance of con sidering syllable position, number of elements and the constituents of consonant clusters when analysing phonologically impaired children's speech sounds.