Consonant clusters in the speech of children with 5p deletion syndrome

Abstract

Due to motor problems and intellectual impairment, individuals with 5p deletion syndrome experience speech and language problems to varying degrees. This paper examines a corpus of spoken words and larger expressions uttered by eight children aged between four and twelve years with this syndrome, aiming to find out how they produce word initial consonant clusters in the target language.

Most of the children used the same strategies as younger, typically developing Norwegian speaking children to render the target clusters: omission, substitution and vowel intrusion. The most common strategy was omission, followed by substitution and vowel intrusion. In addition, some children also used preposed vowels and metathesis, and a few showed more idiosyncratic patterns, indicative of specific phonological problems.