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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]
A limited number of words in Japanese use epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. An example is the word harusame (春雨（はるさめ）, 'spring rain'), a compound of haru and ame in which an /s/ is added to separate the final /u/ of haru and the initial /a/ of ame. That is a synchronic analysis.
With consonants, girls tend to acquire both initial and final consonants before boys do. [13]: 762 Consonant clusters containing a fricative and /l/ are generally the final clusters acquired, and, by the ages of 7;6-7;11, typically developing children usually no longer reduce clusters. [13]: 766, 768
In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau [a] —is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] English examples include smog , coined by blending smoke and fog , [ 3 ] [ 5 ] and motel , from motor ( motorist ) and hotel .
By analogy with words like these, certain other words ending in /m/, which had no historical /b/ sound, had a silent letter b added to their spelling by way of hypercorrection. Such words include limb and crumb. [35] Where the final cluster /mn/ occurred, this was reduced to /m/ (the him-hymn merger), as in column, autumn, damn, solemn.
The alveolar trill and the alveolar tap are in phonemic contrast word-internally between vowels (as in carro 'car' vs. caro 'expensive'), but are otherwise in complementary distribution, as long as syllable division is taken into account: the tap occurs after any syllable-initial consonant, while the trill occurs after any syllable-final consonant.
This word-initial gemination is triggered either lexically by the item preceding the lengthening consonant (e.g. by preposition a 'to, at' in [a kˈkaːsa] a casa 'homeward' but not by definite article la in [la ˈkaːsa] la casa 'the house'), or by any word-final stressed vowel ([parˈlɔ ffranˈtʃeːze] parlò francese 's/he spoke French ...
Lexical syntactic doubling has been explained as a diachronic development, initiating as straightforward synchronic assimilation of word-final consonants to the initial consonant of the following word, subsequently reinterpreted as gemination prompts after terminal consonants were lost in the evolution from Latin to Italian (ad > a, et > e, etc.).