Stop + /r/
The younger age groups found stop + /r/ clusters difficult in both lan-
guages, but with increasing age, the children exhibited significant improve-
ments in production accuracy (/pr/ (Welsh): F(6,34) = 11. 591, p < 0.001; /pr/
(English): F(6,34) = 20.892, p < 0.001; /br/ (Welsh): F(6,34) = 16.917, p < 0.001;
/br/ (English): F(6,34) = 3.379, p = 0.01; /tr/ (Welsh): F(6,34) = 6.976, p < 0.001;
/tr/ (English): F(6,34) = 5.912, p < 0.001; /kr/ (Welsh): F(6,34) = 7. 7 1 5 ,
p < 0.001; /kr/ (English): F(6,34) = 20.648, p < 0.001; /gr/ (Welsh): F(6,34) =
15.787, p < 0.001; /gr/ (English): F(6,34) = 23.192, p < 0.001). Note that with
respect to the Welsh words, the children showed greater accuracy earlier on
/tr/ and /kr/ than on /pr/, /br/ and /gr/.
Fricative + /l/
Performance on fricative + /l/ clusters was excellent from the outset. The
only significant improvement across the age groups was found for /fl/ in the
English word set (F(6,34) = 3.024, p = 0.018). Inspection of Table 1.4 shows
that this is attributable to a few inaccurate productions by Welsh-dominant
children in the two youngest age groups.
Fricative + /r/
/fr/ showed significant age effects in both languages (Welsh:
F(6,34) = 12.691, p < 0.001; English: F(6,34) = 4.991, p = 0.001), with some-
what more accurate productions on the Welsh than the English words.
Interestingly, age was found to interact with dominance on English /fr/,
with the Welsh-dominant bilinguals outperforming their English-dominant
counterparts.
Other significant age effects were found for the English-specific clusters
/θr/ (F(6,34) = 4.192, p = 0.003) and /ʃr/ (F(6,34) = 4.248, p = 0.003). Table
1.4 indicates poor performance on both clusters from the outset with slow
improvements over time. Note that the Welsh-dominant bilinguals failed to
produce /θr/ accurately in more than 50% of instances in all age groups. On
the other hand, they performed better on /ʃr/ than the English-dominant
children.
/s/ + stop
Performance on /s/ + stop clusters was generally excellent. Thus, there
was no single erroneous production of /sd/ and /st/, for instance. The only
significant age effect was found for English /sp/ (F(6,34) = 2.981, p = 0.019),
owing to a few inaccurate productions by the Welsh-dominant children aged
2;6–3;6.
/s/ + nasal
On the Welsh words, /sm/ was produced with complete accuracy by all
children. Interestingly, however, on the English words productions of the
same cluster were only consistently accurate from the age of 3;6
(F(6,34) = 29.37, p < 0.001). Significant age effects were also found for English
Speech Learning in Bilinguals 13