Acquisition of /s/ clusters in Croatian speaking children with phonological disorders

The authors studied the acquisition of nine #sC clusters in 30 Croatian-speaking phonologically disordered children, aged between 3;8-7;0 years, by analysing their renditions of target words elicited in response to visual stimuli presented on a computer screen. Results did not support the idea that a greater jump in sonority from C1 to C2 would translate into a greater accuracy of productions. The percentage of correct realizations was high for /s/+nasal combinations (mean 85%), and for approximants /j/ and // (mean 77%) and stops (mean 73%), with significantly lower scores for liquids /l/ and /r/ (mean 47%). The difference between SSP-violating and SSP-following targets was not significant, and neither was the homorganicity of the target. The most frequent errors were substitution of the first consonant (i.e. /s/) while keeping the second one. These children are significantly different from the typically-developing group in two ways. First, retention of the first or the second consonant is not as frequent, and, second, /l/ is almost as difficult as /r/, as opposed to the typically-developing children who had no more difficulty with /l/ than with the other two approximants. Although cluster reduction is not the most common process in erroneous productions, the patterns emerged here generally agree with the findings from other languages.