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Inlinguistics, aconsonant cluster,consonant sequence orconsonant compound is a group ofconsonants which have no interveningvowel. In English, for example, the groups/spl/ and/ts/ are consonant clusters in the wordsplits. In the education field it is variously called a consonant cluster or aconsonant blend.[1][2]
Some linguists[who?] argue that the term can be properly applied only to those consonant clusters that occur within onesyllable. Others claim that the concept is more useful when it includes consonant sequences across syllable boundaries. According to the former definition, the longest consonant clusters in the wordextra would be/ks/ and/tr/,[3] whereas the latter allows/kstr/, which is phonetically[kst̠ɹ̠̊˔ʷ] in some accents.
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Each language has an associated set of phonotactic constraints. Languages' phonotactics differ as to what consonant clusters they permit. Many languages are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters, and some forbid consonant clusters entirely.
For example,Hawaiian, like mostOceanic languages, forbids consonant clusters entirely.Japanese is almost as strict, but allows a sequence of anasal consonant plus another consonant, as inHonshū[hoꜜɰ̃ɕɯː] (the name of the largest island of Japan). It also permitsgeminate /kk/, /pp/, /ss/, and /tt/. However, palatalized consonants, such as [kʲ] inTōkyō[toːkʲoː], are single consonants.
Standard Arabic forbids initial consonant clusters and more than two consecutive consonants in other positions, as do most otherSemitic languages, althoughModern Israeli Hebrew permits initial two-consonant clusters (e.g.pkak "cap";dlaat "pumpkin"), andMoroccan Arabic, underBerber influence, allows strings of several consonants.[4]
Like mostMon–Khmer languages,Khmer permits only initial consonant clusters with up to three consonants in a row per syllable.Finnish has initial consonant clusters natively only on South-Western dialects and on foreign loans, and only clusters of three inside the word are allowed. Most spoken languages and dialects, however, are more permissive. InBurmese, consonant clusters of only up to three consonants (the initial and two medials—two written forms of/-j-/,/-w-/) at the initial onset are allowed in writing and only two (the initial and one medial) are pronounced; these clusters are restricted to certain letters. SomeBurmese dialects allow for clusters of up to four consonants (with the addition of the/-l-/ medial, which can combine with the above-mentioned medials).
At the other end of the scale,[5] theKartvelian languages of Georgia are drastically more permissive of consonant clustering. Clusters inGeorgian of four, five or six consonants are not unusual—for instance,/brtʼqʼɛli/ (flat),/mt͡sʼvrtnɛli/ (trainer) and/prt͡skvna/ (peeling)—and if grammaticalaffixes are used, it allows an eight-consonant cluster:/ɡvbrdɣvnis/ (he's plucking us),/gvprt͡skvni/ (you peel us). Consonants cannot appear as syllable nuclei in Georgian, so this syllable is analysed as CCCCCCCCVC. ManySlavic languages may manifest almost as formidable numbers of consecutive consonants, such as in theCzech tongue twisterStrč prst skrz krk (pronounced[str̩tʃpr̩stskr̩skr̩k]ⓘ), meaning 'stick a finger through the neck', theSlovak wordsštvrť/ʃtvr̩c/ ("quarter"), andžblnknutie/ʒbl̩ŋknucɪɛ̯/ ("clunk"; "flop"), and theSlovene wordskrbstvo/skrbstʋo/ ("welfare"). However, theliquid consonants/r/ and/l/ can form syllable nuclei in West and South Slavic languages and behave phonologically as vowels in this case.
An example of a true initial cluster is thePolish wordwszczniesz (/fʂt͡ʂɲɛʂ/ ("you will initiate"). In theSerbo-Croatian wordopskrbljivanje/ɔpskr̩bʎiʋaɲɛ/ ("victualling") the⟨lj⟩ and⟨nj⟩ aredigraphs representing single consonants:[ʎ] and[ɲ], respectively. InDutch, clusters of six or even seven consonants are possible (e.g.angstschreeuw ("a scream of fear"),slechtstschrijvend ("writing the worst") andzachtstschrijdend ("treading the most softly")).
SomeSalishan languages exhibit long words with no vowels at all, such as theNuxálk word/xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ/:he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.[6] It is extremely difficult to accurately classify which of these consonants may be acting as the syllable nucleus, and these languages challenge classical notions of exactly what constitutes asyllable. The same problem is encountered in theNorthern Berber languages.
There has been a trend to reduce and simplify consonant clusters inthe Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, such asChinese andVietnamese.Old Chinese was known to contain additionalmedials such as/r/ and/or/l/, which yielded retroflexion inMiddle Chinese and today'sMandarin Chinese. The word江, read/tɕiɑŋ˥/ in Mandarin and/kɔːŋ˥⁻˥˧/inCantonese, is reconstructed as*klong or*krung inOld Chinese by Sinologists likeZhengzhang Shangfang,William H. Baxter, andLaurent Sagart. Additionally, initial clusters such as "tk" and "sn" were analysed in recent reconstructions of Old Chinese, and some were developed as palatalisedsibilants. Similarly, inThai, words with initial consonant clusters are commonly reduced in colloquial speech to pronounce only the initial consonant, such as the pronunciation of the wordครับ reducing from/kʰrap̚˦˥/ to/kʰap̚˦˥/.[7]
Another element of consonant clusters in Old Chinese was analysed in coda and post-coda position. Some "departing tone" syllables have cognates in the "entering tone" syllables, which feature a -p, -t, -k in Middle Chinese and Southern Chinese varieties. The departing tone was analysed to feature a post-coda sibilant, "s". Clusters of -ps, -ts, -ks, were then formed at the end of syllables. These clusters eventually collapsed into "-ts" or "-s", before disappearing altogether, leaving elements ofdiphthongisation in more modern varieties. Old Vietnamese also had a rich inventory of initial clusters, but these were slowly merged with plain initials during Middle Vietnamese, and some have developed into the palatal nasal.
Some consonant clusters originate from the loss of a vowel in between two consonants, usually (but not always) due to vowel reduction caused by lack of stress.[8] This is also the origin of most consonant clusters in English, some of which go back to Proto-Indo-European times. For example,⟨glow⟩ comes from Proto-Germanic *glo-, which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European *gʰel-ó, where *gʰel- is a root meaning 'to shine, to be bright' and is also present in⟨glee⟩,⟨gleam⟩, and⟨glade⟩.
Consonant clusters can also originate from assimilation of a consonant with a vowel. In many Slavic languages, the combination mji, mje, mja etc. regularly gave mlji, mlje, mlja etc. Compare Russianzemlyá, which had this change, with Polishziemia, which lacks the change, both from Proto-Balto-Slavic *źemē.[citation needed] SeeProto-Slavic language andHistory of Proto-Slavic for more information about this change.
All languages differ in syllable structure and cluster template. A loanword fromAdyghe in the extinctUbykh language,psta ('to well up'), violates Ubykh's limit of two initial consonants. The English wordssphere/ˈsfɪər/ andsphinx/ˈsfɪŋks/,Greek loanwords, break the rule that two fricatives may not appear adjacentlyword-initially. Some English words, including thrash, three, throat, and throw, start with the voiceless dental fricative /θ/, the liquid /r/, or the /r/ cluster (/θ/+/r/). This cluster example in Proto-Germanic has a counterpart in which /θ/ was followed by /l/. In early North and West Germanic, the /l/ cluster disappeared. This suggests that clusters are affected as words are loaned to other languages. The examples show that every language has syllable preference[9] based on syllable structure and segment harmony of the language. Other factors that affect clusters when loaned to other languages include speech rate, articulatory factors, and speech perceptivity.[10][11][12][13] Bayley has added that social factors such as age, gender, and geographical locations of speakers can determine clusters when they are loaned crosslinguistically.[14]
InEnglish, the longest possible initial cluster is three consonants, as insplit/ˈsplɪt/,strudel/ˈstruːdəl/,strengths/ˈstrɛŋkθs/, and "squirrel"/ˈskwɪrəl/, all beginning with/s/ or/ʃ/, containing/p/,/t/, or/k/, and ending with/l/,/r/, or/w/[a]; the longest possible final cluster is five consonants, as inangsts (/ˈæŋksts/),[citation needed] though this is rare (perhaps owing to being derived from a recent German loanword[15]). However, the/k/ inangsts may also be consideredepenthetic; formany speakers, nasal-sibilant sequences in thecoda require insertion of a voiceless stophomorganic to the nasal. For speakers without this feature, the word is pronounced without the/k/. Final clusters of four consonants, as inangsts in other dialects (/ˈæŋsts/),twelfths/ˈtwɛlfθs/,sixths/ˈsɪksθs/,bursts/ˈbɜːrsts/ (inrhotic accents) andglimpsed/ˈɡlɪmpst/, are more common. Within compound words, clusters of five consonants or more are possible (if cross-syllabic clusters are accepted), as inhandspring/ˈhændsprɪŋ/ and in the Yorkshire place-name ofHampsthwaite/hæmpsθweɪt/.[citation needed]
It is important to distinguish clusters anddigraphs. Clusters are made of two or more consonantsounds, while a digraph is a group of two consonantletters standing for a single sound. For example, in the wordship, the two letters of the digraph⟨sh⟩ together represent the single consonant[ʃ]. Conversely, the letter⟨x⟩ can produce the consonant clusters/ks/ (annex),/gz/ (exist),/kʃ/ (sexual), or/gʒ/ (some pronunciations of "luxury"). It is worth noting that⟨x⟩ often produces sounds in two different syllables (following the general principle of saturating the subsequent syllable before assigning sounds to the preceding syllable). Also note a combination digraph and cluster as seen inlength with two digraphs⟨ng⟩,⟨th⟩ representing a cluster of two consonants:/ŋθ/ (although it may be pronounced/ŋkθ/ instead, as⟨ng⟩ followed by a voiceless consonant in the same syllable often does);lights with a silent digraph⟨gh⟩ followed by a cluster⟨t⟩,⟨s⟩:/ts/; and compound words such assightscreen/ˈsaɪtskriːn/ orcatchphrase/ˈkætʃfreɪz/.
Not all consonant clusters are distributed equally among the languages of the world. Consonant clusters have a tendency to fall under patterns such as thesonority sequencing principle (SSP); the closer a consonant in a cluster is to the syllable's vowel, the moresonorous the consonant is. Among the most common types of clusters are initial stop-liquid sequences, such as inThai (e.g./pʰl/,/tr/, and/kl/). Other common ones include initial stop-approximant (e.g. Thai/kw/) and initial fricative-liquid (e.g. English/sl/) sequences. More rare are sequences which defy the SSP such asProto-Indo-European/st/ and/spl/ (which many of its descendants have, including English). Certain consonants are more or less likely to appear in consonant clusters, especially in certain positions. TheTsou language of Taiwan has initial clusters such as/tf/, which doesn't violate the SSP, but nonetheless is unusual in having the labio-dental/f/ in the second position. The cluster/mx/ is also rare, but occurs inRussian words such asмха (/mxa/).
Consonant clusters at the ends of syllables are less common but follow the same principles. Clusters are more likely to begin with a liquid, approximant, or nasal and end with a fricative, affricate, or stop, such as in English "world"/wə(ɹ)ld/. Yet again, there are exceptions, such as English "lapse"/læps/.
