Predicting phonotactic difficulty in second language acquisition

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that univers al phonotactic preferences guide the acquisition of consonant clusters in a second langu ge. The empirical evidence comes from young learners of English (L2 English) with mother tongues (L1s) from the following families: independent (Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese ), Sino-Tibetan (Chinese), Austronesian (Kosraean, Marshallese, Palauan, Ponapean, Samoan, Tagalog, Trukese, Visayan), Dravidian (Tamil) and Slavic (Polish).