Everything about Phonotactics totally explained
Phonotactics (in
Greek phone = voice and
tactic = course) is a branch of
phonology that deals with restrictions in a
language on the permissible combinations of
phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible
syllable structure,
consonant clusters, and
vowel sequences by means of
phonotactical constraints.
Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, in
Japanese, consonant clusters like /st/ are not allowed, although they're in
English. Similarly, the sounds /kn/ and /ɡn/ are not permitted at the beginning of a word in Modern English but are in
German and
Dutch.
Syllables have the following internal segmental structure:
- Onset (optional)
- Rime (obligatory, comprises Nucleus and Coda):
Both onset and coda may be empty, forming a vowel-only syllable, or alternatively, the nucleus can be occupied by a
syllabic consonant.
English phonotactics
The English syllable (and word)
twelfths /twɛlfθs/ is divided into the onset /tw/, the nucleus /ɛ/, and the coda /lfθs/, and it can thus be described as CCVCCCC (C = consonant, V = vowel). On this basis it's possible to form rules for which representations of phoneme classes may fill the cluster. For instance, English allows at most three consonants in an onset, but among native words under standard accents, phonemes in a three-consonantal onset are limited to the following scheme:
» /s/ +
pulmonic +
approximant:
*/s/ + /m/ + /j/
» */s/ + /t/ + /j ɹ/
*/s/ + /p/ + /j ɹ l/
» */s/ + /k/ + /j ɹ l w/
This constraint can be observed in the pronunciation of the word
blue: originally, the vowel of
blue was identical to the vowel of
cue, approximately [iw]. In most dialects of English, [iw] shifted to [juː]. Theoretically, this would produce **[bljuː]. The cluster [blj], however, infringes the constraint for three-consonantal onsets in English. Therefore, the pronunciation has been reduced to [bluː] by
elision of the [j].
Other languages don't share the same constraint: compare
Spanish pliegue [ˈpljeɣe] or
French pluie [plɥi].
Sonority hierarchy
In general, the rules of phonotactics operate around the
sonority hierarchy, stipulating that the nucleus has maximal sonority and that sonority decreases as you move away from the nucleus. The
voiceless alveolar fricative [s] is lower on the sonority hierarchy than the
alveolar lateral approximant [l], so the combination /sl/ is permitted in onsets and /ls/ is permitted in codas, but /ls/ isn't allowed in onsets and /sl/ isn't allowed in codas. Hence
slips /slɪps/ and
pulse /pʌls/ are possible English words while
*lsips and
*pusl are not. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but in general it holds for the phonotactics of most languages.
Notes and references
Further Information
Get more info on 'Phonotactics'.
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