Frequency and Universal Principles in the Acquisition of Word-Initial Consonant Clusters in Palestinian Arabic

Purpose: In this article, we present the results of our study on the acquisition of word-initial consonant clusters in Palestinian Arabic. The remarkable property of word-initial clusters in Palestinian Arabic is that they often violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle, a universal constraint that disfavors sonority fall (e.g., lba:n “gum”) and, to a lesser degree, sonority plateau (e.g., kta:b “book”). Given the violation of the Sonority Sequencing Principle, the acquisition of word-initial consonant clusters serves as a fruitful ground for studying the interaction of universal principles and language-specific effects. The goal of the study was to shed light on the role of universal principles in language acquisition and how they interact with frequency. Method: We carried out picture naming and sentence completion tasks with 60 monolingual and monodialectal children aged 2;00–5;00 (years;months), equally divided into six age groups. In addition, we built a small corpus of child-directed speech (CDS) to evaluate the distribution of the three sonority profiles of word-initial consonant clusters—rise, plateau, and fall. Results: We found a major language-specific effect in the cluster simplification strategies, with prothesis being the most common strategy (e.g., lbá:n → ilbá:n “gum”). However, this effect was not found in the youngest group (2;00–2;05), where the cross-linguistically favorite strategy of C-deletion was most common (e.g., lbá:n → bá:n “gum”). We also found a major effect of the Sonority Sequencing Principle in the children's productions, contrary to insignificant differences in CDS. Conclusions: Our study supports the claim that language acquisition is affected by both language-specific effects and universal principles. As for the interaction of these factors, we show that the effect of universal principles emerges under two conditions: (a) in early speech (youngest age group), before children accumulate sufficient data that allow language-specific properties to override, and/or (b) when frequency does not play a role.