A sonority-driven analysis of cluster reduction in the speech of Persian-speaking children

While numerous studies have investigated children’s acquisition of clusters، the majority of such studies have only viewed the acquisition of onset clusters in western language countries. Far fewer studies have investigated the acquisition of coda clusters in any other languages. The present article tries to investigate the acquisition of coda consonant clusters by Persian-speaking children within the framework of sonority principle. It shows that children’s consonant cluster reductions are sonority-driven. That is، children reduce the clusters، which obey the sonority principle، to the more sonorous consonant. On the other hand، they metathesize cluster consonants that disobey the sonority principle so that they conform to the so called principle. The other goal of the present article is to provide a mini-grammar of cluster reduction by Persian-speaking children within the framework of Optimality Theory. To follow the aforementioned purpose، the data is analyzed within the framework of Optimality Theory and a mini-grammar is represented by the confliction between violable constraints.