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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]
When a consonant cluster ending in a stop is followed by another consonant or cluster in the next syllable, the final stop in the first syllable is often elided. This may happen within words or across word boundaries. Examples of stops that will often be elided in this way include the [t] in postman and the [d] in cold cuts or band saw. [41]
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 ...
Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple successive sounds. The most common example is x , which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in tax / t æ k s /). The same letter (or sequence of letters) may be pronounced differently when occurring in different positions within a word.
After this, if there is an additional consonant inside the word, it is placed at the end of the syllable. This consonant is the syllable coda. Thus if a consonant cluster of two consonants occurs between vowels, they are broken up between syllables: one goes with the syllable before, the other with the syllable after. [60] puella /pu.el.la/ (CV ...
In support of this analysis, Ottawa fortis consonants correspond to clusters of /h/ followed by a lenis consonant in the dialects of northwestern Ontario, and the fortis consonants are descended from sequences of consonants in Proto-Algonquian, the reconstructed ancestor language from which Ojibwe and its dialects descend.
Starting around the mid-20th century, [4] the alveolar stop in /tr, dr/ has slowly been replaced by a post-alveolar affricate instead, resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant clusters [tʃɹ] and [dʒɹ]. [5] This phenomenon also occurs in /str/, resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant cluster [ʃtʃɹ].
Cluster reduction also takes place in Catalan, and in a similar way as it happens in English. Certain consonant clusters placed at the end of a word are reduced: cent /sen/ instead of /sent/, although they recover the reduced consonant when the cluster falls between vowels: centenar /səntəˈna/.