Persian Learners' Syllabification of English Consonant Clusters

Abstract

In this paper, Persian learners' syllabification of English word-initial and word-final consonant clusters was tested on the basis of the structural differences between their representations and different phonotactic constraints in both English and Persian. For this purpose, twelve children between the ages of 4-6 were experimented on by using 53 pseudo-words designed for this particular study. These pseudo-words were formed by taking into account the English phonotactic constraints. The production of the learners were recorded and transcribed. The results of this study indicate that onset clusters were mainly re-syllabified by epenthesis while the coda clusters mainly by deletion indicting transfer (negative) from Persian to English in the initial state of interlanguage.