Production of consonant clusters in patients with phonological impairment

Hanna Jakob & Prof. Dr. Wolfram Ziegler

Contact: hanna.jakob@ekn-muenchen.de

Production of consonant clusters involves high demands on the articulatory system. Consonant clusters are considered as marked structures in some phonological theories, e.g., Optimality Theory (OT). Patients with apraxia of speech and patients with phonological impairment often produce speech errors on consonant clusters, especially cluster simplifications through consonant omissions or schwa-insertions. These errors are often interpreted in OT-terms. Previous studies usually investigated only the production of single words.

This PhD-Project investigates the production of onset consonant clusters in single words (e.g., “klage”) as well as in pairs of simple and complex words (e.g., “klage – kater”). Patients with apraxia of speech and patients with phonological impairment are included.

The main questions are:

• Does simplification arise in the complex structures? Which types of speech errors occur?
• What happens with a cluster word in combination with a simple word?
• How stable and dominant is the feature “complexity”? Does the cluster transfer to simple words?

The PhD-Project is part of the DFG-ANR joint project “Path to phonological complexity: Onset clusters in speech production, perception, and disorders” (PO 1269/3-1).