Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, the group spr- is a consonant cluster in the word spring, and the group -nks also is, at the end of the word thinks.

Related Topics:
Linguistics - Consonant - Vowel

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Many languages do not permit consonant clusters at all. Maori and Pirahã, for instance, don't permit any more than one consonant in a row before another vowel must appear. Japanese is almost as strict, but it allows clusters of n + consonant: Honshu, the name of one of the major islands of Japan, is an example. A great many of the languages of the world are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters: almost every Pacific island nation's language permits either one-term clusters or slight variations on a theme. Tahitian, Fijian, Samoan and Hawaiian are all of this sort. Standard Arabic does not permit initial consonant clusters, or more than two consecutive consonants in other positions. 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.

Related Topics:
Maori - Pirahã - Japanese - Pacific - Tahitian - Fijian - Samoan - Hawaiian - Arabic - Finnish

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At the other end of the scale, the Kartvelian languages of Georgia are almost unbelievable in terms of the consonant clusters they permit. Clusters are noted in Georgian of four, five or six terms are not unusual - for instance, brt'q'eli (flat), mc'vrtneli (trainer) and prckvna (peeling) - and if grammatical affixes and a flight of the imagination are used, it allows anthropomorphised turkeys to produce an eight-term cluster: gvbrdγvnis (he's plucking us). Consonants cannot appear as syllable nuclei in Georgian, so this syllable is analysed as CCCCCCCCVC. Some Slavic languages such as Slovak may manifest formidable numbers of consecutive consonants, such as in the word ?tvrť?blnknutie, but the consonants r and l can form syllable nuclei in Slovak, and behave phonologically as vowels in this case. Some Salishan languages exhibit long words with no vowels at all, such as the Nuxalk word x?p?x???t?p??sk?c? he had had a bunchberry plant. 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 a syllable.

Related Topics:
Kartvelian - Georgian - Slavic languages - Slovak - Salishan languages - Nuxalk - Syllable

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Some linguists argue that consonant clusters should be restricted to those that occur within one syllable: English split is an example of this. Others believe that consonant clusters are more useful as a definition when they may occur across syllable boundaries, as in the German Angstschweiss.

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Consonant clusters occurring in loanwords do not necessarily follow the borrowing language's cluster limits. The Ubykh language's root psta, a loan from Adyghe, violates Ubykh's rule of no more than two initial consonants; also, the English words sphere, sphinx, Greek loans, violate the restraint that two fricatives may not appear adjacently word-initially.

Related Topics:
Ubykh language - Adyghe - Greek - Fricatives

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In English, the longest possible initial cluster is three terms, as in split; the longest possible final cluster is four terms, as in twelfths and texts (and infarcts for some rhotic accents).

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