A Constraint-Based Approach to Chinese Speakers’ Acquisition of English Consonant Clusters

This paper discusses Chinese speakers’ acquisition of English word-initial consonant clusters within the constraint-based OT (Optimality Theory) framework. An experiment was conducted to elicit Chinese students’ production of such clusters. Three significant findings were drawn from the results: (1) preference for the CV structure, (2) tendency to preserve the initial consonant, and (3) preference for Cr over Cl clusters. Neither of the two existing models on EFL onset consonant clusters, the Minimal Sonority Distance Parameter-Setting Model (Broselow and Finer, 1991) and Typological Markedness (Eckman and Iverson, 1993), is adequate in accounting for the results. It is demonstrated that the OT framework provides a more explicit analysis for such EFL structures and interlanguage variations since it (1) accounts for patterns in not only learners’ error rates but also their error types, (2) explains both how and why such errors emerge, and (3) explicitly captures the notion of Interlanguage and its interactions with learners’ Native Language and the Target Language.