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Updated: Aug 9, 2026
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Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Typically developing and speech-impaired children's adherence to the sonority hypothesis
Lynelle Wyllie-Smith1, Sharynne McLeod, Martin J Ball
1School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia.
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics
|April 29, 2006
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Child language acquisition
- Phonological development
- Speech-language pathology
Background:
- Children often simplify consonant clusters into single consonants during speech development.
- The sonority hypothesis offers a potential explanation for these phonological patterns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if children's word-initial consonant cluster reductions follow the sonority hypothesis.
- To compare typically developing children and those with speech impairments.
Main Methods:
- Analyzed consonant cluster productions in 16 typically developing children and 40 children with speech impairments.
- Examined adherence to the sonority hypothesis in both target and non-target consonant reductions.
Main Results:
- The sonority hypothesis was followed when children reduced clusters to a target consonant.
- Violations of the sonority hypothesis occurred when clusters were reduced to non-target consonants.
- Adherence to the sonority hypothesis varied across different cluster types and individual reductions.
Conclusions:
- Sonority principles partially explain consonant cluster reduction patterns in children's speech.
- The sonority hypothesis alone does not account for all observed cluster reduction behaviors.
- Further research is needed to fully understand the complexities of phonological development.
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