Acquisition of /s/-clusters in Hebrew-speaking children with phonological disorders

This study examines the production and reduction patterns of initial /s/ clusters by Hebrew-speaking children with phonological disorders. Data were collected from 30 children with phonological disorders between the ages of 3;5–5;2. The data were elicited by means of a picture-naming task combined with a sentence completion task. Target words consisted of initial clusters, including #sC and #CC clusters. Results revealed that the percentage of correct productions of /s/+approximant clusters were significantly lower than those of the correct productions of other /s/ clusters. The differences between /s/+approximant clusters and the other /s/ clusters also emerged in the reduction patterns, where clusters from the first group were reduced to C1 but clusters from the second group were reduced to C2. There were no differences in the correct productions between the productions of SSP-violating clusters and the SSP-following clusters.