Study of developmental consonant cluster in 2-4 years old farsi speaking children

A consonant cluster is defined as a group or sequence of consonants that appear together in a syllable without any intervening vowel between them. The age of acquisition of consonant clusters is of special important. The ability to produce consonant clusters is reported to emerge when children are around 2 years of age. These early attempts usually result in simplified clusters which are eventually elaborated into correct clusters. The aim of the present study was to determine the acquisition age of some consonant clusters and their developmental patterns in Farsi-speaking children. 120 normal Farsi-speaking children with the age range of 2 to 4 years who lived in Isfahan at the time of experiment participated in this descriptive study. In the present study, the ability to produce clusters was evaluated through picture naming. An assessment tool was tailor-made for this research and it consisted of 24 words with cvcc structure. Study results showed that the age of acquisition for mp and nd was 2.7-3 years. Xt, sk, sb, ∫k, st, ft, st, ∫t, ks, bz, f∫, ng and ∫m was acquired at 3 to 3.6 years and rs, rm, rf, rg, rd, rx, tr were appeared between 3.7 to 4 years. Results indicated that age of acquisition was started around 2.5. Considering the sequence of acquired clusters, it was revealed that clusters were developed in parallel with consonant development. In other words, consonant clusters containing stop and nasal consonant are acquired before other clusters.