ABSTRACT

All the significant features of the French sound are preserved in English, but are split into a sequence instead of being represented in a single phoneme. The European-language illustrations show that there are not only many possible combinations of consonants, even within this relatively narrow range of languages, but also that there are combinations of a variety of types. The study of sequences of sounds in combination is generally known as phonotactics. In orthodox generative phonology the term morpheme structure rules was used, since the aim is to provide rules to describe the permissible patterns of morphemes in a language. Hitherto, we have considered one particular type of phoneme sequence – the consonant cluster. There are, however, other ways in which particular languages may impose restrictions on the types of sequence permitted.