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Phonotactics (in Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 phone = voice and tactic = course) is a branch of phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 that deals with restrictions in a language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 on the permissible combinations of phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable
Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
 structure, consonant cluster
Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s, and vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 sequences by means of phonotactical constraints.

Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, in Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, consonant clusters like are not allowed, although they are in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
.






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Phonotactics (in Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 phone = voice and tactic = course) is a branch of phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
 that deals with restrictions in a language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 on the permissible combinations of phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable
Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
 structure, consonant cluster
Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s, and vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 sequences by means of phonotactical constraints.

Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, in Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, consonant clusters like are not allowed, although they are in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
. Similarly, the sounds and are not permitted at the beginning of a word in Modern English but are in German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 and Dutch
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
, and were permitted in Old and Middle English
Middle English

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and about 1470, when the #Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William...
.

Syllables have the following internal segmental structure:
  • Onset
    Syllable onset

    In phonetics and phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a syllable that precedes the syllable nucleus....
     (optional)
  • Rime
    Syllable rime

    In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a Syllable nucleus and an optional Syllable coda. It is the part of the syllable used in Rhyme, and the part that is lengthened or stressed when a person elongates or stresses a word in speech....
     (obligatory, comprises Nucleus and Coda):
    • Nucleus
      Syllable nucleus

      In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with an syllable onset and end with a syllable coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory is the nucleus....
       (obligatory)
    • Coda
      Syllable coda

      In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the syllable nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a syllable rime....
       (optional)


Both onset and coda may be empty, forming a vowel-only syllable, or alternatively, the nucleus can be occupied by a syllabic consonant
Syllabic consonant

A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable on its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable. The diacritic for this in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the under-stroke, , at Unicode code point U+329....
.

English phonotactics


The English syllable (and word) twelfths is divided into the onset , the nucleus , and the coda , and it can thus 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. For instance, English allows at most three consonants in an onset, but among native words under standard accents, phonemes in a three-consonantal onset are limited to the following scheme:

+ pulmonic + approximant
Approximant consonant

Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....
:
  • + +
  • + +
  • + +
  • + +


This constraint can be observed in the pronunciation of the word blue: originally, the vowel of blue was identical to the vowel of cue, approximately . In most dialects of English, shifted to . Theoretically, this would produce **. The cluster , however, infringes the constraint for three-consonantal onsets in English. Therefore, the pronunciation has been reduced to by elision
Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphony effect....
 of the .

Other languages don't share the same constraint: compare Spanish
Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
 pliegue or French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 pluie .

Sonority hierarchy

In general, the rules of phonotactics operate around the sonority hierarchy
Sonority hierarchy

A sonority hierarchy or sonority scale is a ranking of speech communication sounds by amplitude. For example, if you say the vowel [a], you will produce much louder sound than if you say the Stop consonant [t]....
, stipulating that the nucleus has maximal sonority and that sonority decreases as you move away from the nucleus. The voiceless alveolar fricative
Voiceless alveolar fricative

The voiceless alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described....
  is lower on the sonority hierarchy than the alveolar lateral approximant
Alveolar lateral approximant

The alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental consonant, alveolar consonant, and postalveolar consonant lateral consonant approximant consonant is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l....
 , so the combination is permitted in onsets and is permitted in codas, but is not allowed in onsets and is not allowed in codas. Hence slips and pulse are possible English words while *lsips and *pusl are not. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but in general it holds for the phonotactics of most languages.