frequency counts for consonant clusters in English

[Cynthia W Core]

I don't know if this helpful or relevant, but Sharynne McLeod has researched
cluster acquisition, and maybe she has some data on this topic.  See
reference below.

McLeod, S., van Doorn, J., Reed, V. A. (2001). Normal acquisition of
consonant clusters. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 10,
99-110.


Cynthia W. Core, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
College of Education
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL 33431
(561) 297-1138

-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]
On Behalf Of Marc Joanisse
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 2:46 PM
To: Brian MacWhinney
Cc: M.Pettinato at city.ac.uk; info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: Re: frequency counts for consonant clusters in English

Michèle,
Just to expand on what Brian said:  the transcriptions in CELEX are 
syllabified such that you can be sure that the clusters are not 
ambisyllabic: for instance, when calculating the frequency of [st] you 
would want to count "mist" but maybe not "mister." Also, I think CELEX 
is based on a larger corpus so it would probably include more words and 
would likely also give you more accurate token frequency estimates for 
each.

(Of course, I don't mean to imply there's anything wrong with using 
CHILDES corpora for this purpose!)

-Marc-

On May 20, 2004, at 1:31 PM, Brian MacWhinney wrote:

> Dear Michèle,
>      You could do this from CHILDES data, but, if I remember 
> correctly, CELEX has already done all of this for you.
>
> --Brian MacWhinney
>
> On May 20, 2004, at 6:40 AM, M.Pettinato at city.ac.uk wrote:
>
>> Dear colleagues,
>> I am a Phd student working on the production and perception of 
>> consonant clusters in people with Down Syndrome.
>>
>> I need to find the frequency with which certain clusters appear in 
>> spoken English, for example word-initial 'pl', 'str' or word-final 
>> 'lp', 'fs' etc.
>>
>> Does anybody know if this data is readily available out there, or 
>> would I have to perform a frequency count myself?
>>
>> I have been advised to use CELEX for this, but I was wondering 
>> whether it would also be possible to use CHILDES & how one would go 
>> about doing this.
>>
>> Any ideas & comments welcome!
>>
>> Michèle Pettinato
>>
>
>
--
Marc Joanisse, Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience
The University of Western Ontario
marcj at uwo.ca
http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/lrcn