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Consonant clusters
• When two or more consonants occur together, they are called a consonant cluster. (“Cluster” means “group.”)
• There are restrictions on how many consonants can occur in a particular position, and which consonants can occur together.
• For example, in English, /sk/, /pl/, and /spl/ are possible combinations at the beginning of a word.
Possible clusters in syllable-initial position
• It is possible to have one, two, or three consonant sounds at the beginning of a syllable, but not more.
• Here are some words that illustrate common twoconsonant clusters at the beginning of syllables:
• Beginning with stops: play, pray, pure, blue, brown, beauty, true, twin, dry, clean, cream, cute, quick, glow, green
• Beginning with fricatives: fly, fry, few, three, slow, swim, spot, stone, skin, smile, snow, shriek, huge
Possible clusters in syllable-initial position
• Some of these words have only one consonant letter at the beginning, even though they start with two consonant sounds:
• cute, beauty, pure, few, huge
• In words like quick, quiet, and question, the letters qu stand for the consonant cluster /kw/.
Possible clusters in syllable-final position
• At the end of a syllable, we can have one, two, three, or four consonants together. Many of the longer clusters are in words with the grammatical endings -s or -ed.
• Here are some words ending in two consonant sounds:
• Help, felt, old, milk, shelf, harp, curb, art, cord, mark, scarf, serve, bump, ant, hand, tense, ranch, strange, sink, health, else, bulge, film, earth, course, marsh, march, urge, arm, barn, girl, wasp, trust, ask, soft, apt, act, depth, tax, fourth, fifth, tenth
Possible clusters in syllable-final position
• Here are some words that illustrate common threeconsonant clusters at the end of syllables:
• Text, sixth, exempt, against, waltz, quartz, first, world.
• These words end in consonant clusters that are longer because of a grammatical ending.
• Bends, linked, ends, lengths, texts, sixths, exempts, worlds, desks, robbed, begged, glimpsed, walked, waltzed
It is known that the beginning and the end of a syllable always coincide with those of the word, this means that the number of members of onsets and codas are always the same in both cases.
Our analysis found out that English onsets and codas have their own characteristic features and investigations made in the nature of codas in English syllables allow us to make the following conclusions:
- The English language allows close syllables (codas).
- In English the components of the syllable (elements of onsets and codas) are usually determined by the phonetic rules of the language.
- Each component of the syllable is strictly defined by the phonotactic rules of the language.
- The glottal fricative [h] and sonorants [r,j,w] never occur in the coda of a syllable.
- When a syllable coda has more than one consonant, the more sonorous sounds tend to be first, followed by less sonorant sounds. In other words, sonorant sounds tend to be closer to the syllable nucleus.
- The following phonemes cannot be found in the final position of a two-member consonant cluster of syllable codas in English [g, Ʒ, ð, h, l, r, j, w, ŋ].
- The work of the vocal cords are also regulated by the character of the components of the coda in a syllable – the second voiced element of the coda demands the presence of a voiced counterpart in the first position.
- Only the consonants [t,s,z and Ɵ] can be found in the three-consonant codas.
- In the position of the final element of the four-consonant coda only the consonant [ s ] is found.
The above discussion demonstrates the basic syllable structure as consisting of an onset, a nucleus and a coda – with up to three consonants in the onset position, a vowel (or in some circumstances a syllabic consonant) as the nucleus, and up to four consonants acting as the coda. This structure, therefore, limits which combination of speech sounds can legitimately constitute a syllable. We see that a syllable cannot consist of only consonants or more than one vowel. We have also noted that a syllable should minimally consist of one nuclear vowel.
In English, consonants have been analyzed as acting simultaneously as the coda of one syllable and the onset of the following syllable, as in 'bellow' bel-low, a phenomenon known as ambisyllabicity. It is argued that words such as arrow /ærou/ can't be divided into separately pronounceable syllables: neither /æ/ nor /ær/ is a possible independent syllable, and likewise with the other short vowels.
A syllable is a basic unit of written and spoken language. It is a unit consisting of uninterrupted sounds that can be used to make up words. For example, the word hotel has two syllables: ho and tel. These will be marked here as in ho/tel.
To find the number of syllables in a word, the following steps are made: the vowels in the word are counted, all the silent vowels, (like the silent e at the end of a word, or the second vowel when two vowels are together in a syllable) are substructed, one vowel from every diphthong (diphthongs only count as one vowel sound) is counted and the number of vowels sounds left in the word is the same as the number of syllables. So the number of syllables that we hear when we pronounce a word is the same as the number of vowel sounds heard. For example: the word came has 2 vowels, but the e is silent, leaving one vowel sound and one syllable.
The word outside has 4 vowels, but the e is silent and the ou is a diphthong which counts as only one sound, so this word has only two vowel sounds and therefore, two syllables.
The written (otrthographic) form of the English language has its own following specific features in the kinds of syllables: