English word-initial consonant clusters containing s violate the universal sonority sequencing principle
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Phonological literature acknowledges that English word-initial consonant clusters containing an initial /s/ superficially violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle, prompting specialized structural analyses to reconcile them with phonological theory.
Previous work on children's acquisition of complex sequences points to a tendency for affricates to be acquired before clusters, but there is no clear evidence of a difference in order of acquisition between clusters with /s/ that violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), such as /s/ followed by stop in onset position, and other clusters that obey the SSP. One problem with studies that have compared the acquisition of SSP-obeying and SSP-violating clusters is that the component sounds in the two types of sequences were different.This paper examines the acquisition of initial /s/-stop and stop-/s/ sequences by sixty Greek children aged 2 through 5 years. Results showed greater accuracy for the /s/-stop relative to the stop-/s/ sequences, but no difference in accuracy between /ts/, which is usually analyzed as an affricate in Greek, and the other stop-/s/ sequences. Moreover, errors for the /s/-stop sequences and /ts/ primarily involved stop substitutions, whereas errors for /ps/ and /ks/ were more variable and often involved fricative substitutions, a pattern which may have a perceptual explanation. Finally, /ts/ showed a distinct temporal pattern relative to the stop-/s/ clusters /ps/ and /ks/, similar to what has been reported for productions of Greek adults.
This study investigates how speakers of the Al-Baha variety of the Saudi Southern Dialect (SSD)—a regional Arabic variety that prohibits word-initial consonant clusters—produce English onset clusters. While Arabic learners of English are known to simplify clusters through vowel epenthesis, little is known about how dialect, sonority, and proficiency shape these strategies. To address this gap, 30 SSD-speaking learners of English were recorded producing target words containing both /sC/ clusters (which violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle, SSP) and SSP-conforming clusters. Acoustic analysis with Praat showed that vowel epenthesis was the primary repair strategy, though its placement differed: /sC/ clusters were typically repaired with pre-cluster vowels, especially among less proficient speakers, while SSP-conforming clusters more often elicited intra-cluster epenthesis. Proficient participants achieved significantly higher accuracy (76.8% vs. 50.7%), relied less on prothesis, and occasionally produced target-like clusters without overt repair. However, /sC/ clusters, particularly those containing glides, remained challenging regardless of proficiency, reflecting the combined influence of markedness, articulatory complexity, and L1 transfer. These findings suggest that learners who speak the Al-Baha variety of the Saudi Southern Dialect (SSD) have their interlanguage phonology shaped by the interaction of L1 phonotactic restrictions, universal sonority constraints, and de
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