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In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups /spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word splits. In the education field it is variously called a consonant cluster or a consonant blend. [1] [2]
The Middle English initial cluster /ɡn/ is reduced to /n/ in Modern English. Like the reduction of /kn/, this seems to have taken place during the seventeenth century. [25] The change affected words like gnat, gnostic, gnome, etc., the spelling with gn-being retained despite the loss of the /ɡ/ sound.
Similarly, initial /j/ may be lost in words like yeast and yes (this has also been reported in parts of eastern England), and may be added in words like earth (making "yearth"). [18] For the much more widespread deletion of /j/ in consonant clusters, see yod-dropping (and compare also yod-coalescence and yod-rhotacization).
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
In late Middle English, the extremely rare word-initial cluster fn-became sn-(EME fnesen > LME snezen > ModE sneeze). It has been suggested that the change could be due to a misinterpretation of the uncommon initial sequence fn-as ſn-(sn-written with a long s). [18]
The English syllable (and word) twelfths /twɛlfθs/ is divided into the onset /tw/, the nucleus /ɛ/ and the coda /lfθs/; thus, it can be described as CCVCCCC (C = consonant, V = vowel). On this basis it is possible to form rules for which representations of phoneme classes may fill the cluster.
In general, Old English permitted similar kinds of clusters of coda consonants as modern English. [178] In morphologically simple words, most coda clusters started with a sonorant or /s/. [179] Long (geminate) consonants seem to have become simplified to single consonants when not between vowels.
Doubled orthographic consonants do not always indicate a long phonetic consonant. In English, for example, the [n] sound of running is not lengthened. Consonant digraphs are used in English to indicate the preceding vowel is a short (lax) vowel, while a single letter often allows a long (tense) vowel to occur.