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Phonotactic features of syllable onsets.

We know that speech is a continuum. However, it can be broken into minimal pronounceable units into which sounds show a tendency to cluster or group themselves. These smallest phonetic groups are generally given the name of syllables. The syllable is one or more speech sounds forming a single uninterrupted unit of utterance which may be a commonly recognized subdivision of a word or the whole of a word. Being the smallest pronounceable units, the syllables form language units of greater magnitude, that is morphemes, words and phrases. Each of these units is characterized by a certain syl labic structure. Consequently we might say that a meaningful language unit has two aspects: syllable formation and syllable division which form a dialectical unity.
In our research we try to investigate the nature of the onset substructures of the syllable – CV, CCV, CCCV and all the possible variants of onsets with maximal allowable components in the syllable and their combinability with the nucleus. The results of investigations are based on the materials taken from “Everyman’s English pronouncing dictionary” by D. Jones, London 1958[25.].
The English language allows syllable onsets with one, two and three consonants. So in English the syllable is formed by any vowel alone or in combination with one or more consonants – not more than three in onsets and not more than four in codas. But in this work the fact that the syllable in English may also be formed by word final sonorants [m, n, l] immediately proceeded by a consonant will not be investigated.
The analysis of English onsets of the type CV, CCV, CCCV and the distribution of phonemes in these subtypes gives us the ground to speak about the following results.
English syllable onsets with one consonant may form 23 combinations with the nucleus out of possible 24 combinations. Among all the 24 consonant phonemes of English only one phoneme – the phoneme [ŋ] cannot be combined with any type of nucleus.
The English syllable onsets with two consonants theoretically may have the following combinations: 24 ² = 576
The analysis made in the number of existing combinations of two consonants in English words has found only 38 two – consonant onsets out of possible 576 (see Table I).
TABLE N: 1