Word Q Routledge Taylor & Francis Groi lup ISSN: 0043-7956 (Print) 2373-5112 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwrd20 John Algeo To cite this article: John Algeo (1978) What Consonant Clusters Are Possible?, Word, 29:3, 206-224, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1978.11435661 To link to this article: https://doi.Org/10.1080/00437956.1978.11435661 Published online: 16Jun 2015. Submit your article to this journal G? ■Ill Article views: 21496 SM View related articles G7 What Consonant Clusters Are Possible? Citing articles: 1 View citing articles G? Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journal lnformation?journalCode=rwrd20 JOHN ALGEO What Consonant Clusters Are Possible? 1. Introduction. Phonotactics is the study of the positions occupied by phonological units relative to one another. Thus, it is the component of phonology most nearly concerned with making predictions, that is, with generative description. A great deal of attention has consequently been given both to general questions of phonotactics1 and to descriptions of particular languages.2 Many such accounts have dealt specifically with the role of distribution in defining phonological units, as opposed to definition by their constitution. For example, the question may be asked whether English /s/ is best defined as a unit that can occur initially in a syllable onset before /k, p, t/, or as a unit composed of the features [obstruent, continuant, anterior, coronal, sibilant]. Although this is a pseudo-question, much like asking whether nouns should be defined by function or by form, the history of linguistics is full of pseudo-questions that can be recognized as such only after efforts have been made to answer them. 1 E. Benveniste, "Repartition des consonnes et phonologie du mot," in Etudes phonolo-giques dediees a la memoire de M. le prince N. S. Trubetzkoy (rpt. University, Ala.: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1964), pp. 27-35. Zellig S. Harris, Methods in Structural Linguistics (rpt. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 150-55. Eli Fischer-Jargensen, "On the Definition of Phoneme Categories on a Distributional Basis," Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, VII (1952), 8-39. Hans Vogt, "Phoneme Classes and Phoneme Classification," Word, X (1954), 28-34. Bengt Sigurd, "Rank Order of Consonants Established by Distributional Criteria," Studia Linguistica, IX (1955), 8-20. Charles F. Hockett, A Manual of Phonology, Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, memoir 11; UAL, XXI, no. 4, pt. 1 (Baltimore: Waverly, 1955), pp. 91-95, 150-54. Frank Harary and Herbert H. Paper, "Toward a General Calculus of Phonemic Distribution," Language, XXX (1957), 143-69. N. S. Trubetzkoy, Principles of Phonology, trans, by Christiane A. M. Baltaxe (Berkeley : Univ. of California Press, 1969), pp. 242 55. Fred W. Householder, "The Distributional Determination of English Phonemes," Lingua, XI (1962), 186-91. Robert J. Scholes, Phonotactic Grammatically, Janua Linguarum, series minor 50 (The Hague: Mouton, 1966). 2 For example: Einar Haugen, "The Phonemics of Modern Icelandic," Language, XXXIV (1958), 55-88, here 76-86. Sol Saporta and Heles Contreras, A Phonological Grammar of Spanish (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1962). Diana L. Kao, Structure of the Syllable in Cantonese, Janua Linguarum, series practica 78 (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). 206 WHAT CONSONANT CLUSTERS ARE POSSIBLE? 207 The principal concern of phonotactics, however, is the distribution of phonemes, in whatever way they are defined. One aspect of English that has received a good deal of attention is the permissible sequence in which consonants can follow one another, either after or before a pause.3 Because this aspect of English has been so much studied, it can be taken as a test case to evaluate the accomplishments, procedures, and assumptions of phono-tactic study. A remarkable fact about such distributional studies is the extent to which they disagree with one another. There is, as one would expect, a core of agreement, but it is small, and there are more discrepancies than one might have predicted among sixteen typical studies.4 3 The terms combination, sequence, and cluster are used interchangeably here for a group of tautosyllabic consonants. For a proposal to discriminate among them, see E. Pulgram, "Consonant Cluster, Consonant Sequence, and the Syllable," Phonetica, XIII (1965), 76-81. 4 Leonard Bloomfield, Language (New York: Holt, 1933), pp. 131-34; cf. James W. Abel, "Bloomfield's Final Clusters," Quarterly Journal of Speech, XLV1 (1960), 111-14. Bohumil Trnka. A Phonological Analysis of Present-Day Standard English, rev. ed. (University, Ala.: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1968). Benjamin Lee Whorf, "Linguistics as an Exact Science," Technology Review, XLI1I (December 1940), 61-63, 80-83; rpt. in Language, Thought, and Reality, ed. by John B. Carroll (Cambridge: Technology Press of MIT, 1956), pp. 220-32. Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager, Outline of Linguistic Analysis (Baltimore, Linguistic Society of America, 1942), pp. 48-49. Charles C. Fries, Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language, Publications of the English Language Institute, 1 (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1945), pp. 17-20. George L. Trager and Henry Lee Smith, Jr., An Outline of English Structure, Studies in Linguistics Occasional Papers 3, 1951 (rpt. Washington: ACLS, 1957), p. 35. J. D. O'Connor and J. L. M. Trim, "Vowel, Consonant, and Syllable—A Phonological Definition," Word, IX (1953), 103-22. Lawrence Gaylord Jones, "English Consonantal Distribution," in For Roman Jakobson, ed. by Morris Halle, Horace G. Lunt, Hugh McLean, and Cornelius H. Van Schooneveld (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), pp. 245-53. Kemp Malone, "The Phonemes of Current English," in Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech, ed. by Stefan Einarsson and Norman E. Eliason (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1957), pp. 226-67. Archibald A. Hill, Introduction to Linguistic Structures (New York: Harcourt, 1958), pp. 68 88. Eva Sivertsen, "Segment Inventories for Speech Synthesis," Language and Speech, IV (1961), 27-90. Yao Shen, English Phonetics (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, 1962), pp. 151-59. Lee S. Hultzen, "Consonant Clusters in English," American Speech, XL (1965), 5-19. A. Hood Roberts, A Statistical Linguistic Analysis of American English, Janua Linguarum, series practica 8 (The Hague: Mouton, 1965). F. G. Cassidy, "A Descriptive Approach to the Lexicon," in Approaches in Linguistic Methodology, ed. by Irmengard Rauch and Charles T. Scott (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1967), pp. 9-15,herepp. 12 14. Henry M. Moser, One-Syllable Words (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1969). Other studies of English phonotactics that were not collated, but that are unlikely to affect the over-all results significantly are: J. R. Firth, "The Use and Distribution of Certain English Sounds: Phonetics from a Functional Point of View," English Studies, XVII (1935), 8-18; rpt. in Papers in Linguistics, 1934-1951 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 34-46. Kemp Malone, "The Phonemic Structure of English Monosyllables," American Speech, XI (1936), 205-18. Etsko Kruisinga, The Phonetic Structure of English Words, Bibliotheca Anglicana 2 208 JOHN ALGEO The sixteen collated studies list a total of 107 possible onset clusters, of which there is agreement on only 30, considerably fewer than a third, leaving 77 onset clusters that are rejected by one or more studies. The 30 clusters that are universally recognized, with an example of each, are /bl-/ blue, /br-/ bread, /dr-/ draw, /dw-/ dwell, jR-j flaw, /fr-/ free, /gl-/ glow, grow, /kl-/ claw, /kr-/ crow, /kw-/ quick, /pi-/play, /pr-/pray, /sk-/ sky, /skr-/ scrub, /skw-/ squall, /si-/ sled, /sm-/ sma//, /sn-/ show, /sp-/ speech, /spl-/ 5/»/?/, /spr-/ spray, /st-/ ^raj/, /str-/ s/raw, /sw-/ sway, /Sr-/ s/?rea", /tr-/ tree, /tw-/ ?wi^, /9r-/ throw, /0w-/ thwack. The discrepancy is even more striking for coda clusters. The same studies explicitly list or imply well over 500 clusters that are theoretically possible in syllable codas, of which there is agreement on only 19, fewer than 4 percent.5 The 19 final clusters that appear in all studies that deal with codas (three do not) are /-dz/ adze, /-ft/ soft, /-ks/ fix, /-lb/ bulb, /-15/ belch, /-Id/ build, /-If/ gulf, /-lk/ silk, /-lp/ help, /-It/ salt, /-nc/ punch, /-nd/ sera/, /-nt/ mU, /-nz/ bronze, /-ps/ /apse, /-pt/ a/?f, /-sk/ was/:, /-sp/ c/asj?, /-st/ c/zes/. In addition there are 6 final clusters that were omitted from some single list or other, perhaps inadvertently, the complexities of final clusters being great enough to make error likely. These 6 are /-kt/ act, j-\mj film, /-lv/ valve, /-mp/ jump, /-nj[/ change, and /-nk/ ink. If, as has been generally supposed, there are rules governing the permissible sequences of English sounds, so that some consonant clusters are possible in English whereas others are not, one might expect greater agreement on the facts than is apparent from the studies cited above. The wide-spread disagreement about the phonotactics of English raises questions about the concept "possible" and about the causes of the discrepancies among lists. The chief aim of the present study is to examine those questions, beginning with an analysis of the reasons for disagreement about English consonant clusters. (Bern: Francke, 1942). Bent Nordhjem, The Phonemes of English (Copenhagen: Gad, 1960). Minoru Yasui, Consonant Patterning in English (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1962). Lee S. Hultzen, Joseph H. D. Allen, Jr., and Murray S. Miron, Tables of Transitional Frequencies of English Phonemes (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1964). Hans Kurath, A Phonology and Prosody of Modern English (Heidelberg: Winter, 1964). Peter Sanderson, English Consonant Clusters (Oxford: Pergamon, 1966). 5 Betty Jane Wallace, "A Quantitative Analysis of Consonant Clusters in Present-Day English," dissertation, Univ. of Michigan, 1951, found that "the majority of initial clusters which can potentially occur in English were encountered in the recorded data [10,000 running words]. On the other hand, relatively few of the final clusters which can potentially occur in English appeared in the data," Microfilm Abstracts, XI (1951), 337. The difference in frequency doubtless partially explains why the studies are in greater agreement about onsets than codas. WHAT CONSONANT CLUSTERS ARE POSSIBLE? 209 2. Discrepancies of Method. Perhaps the most far-reaching, but also the most trivial, cause of differences between inventories of clusters is a discrepancy in the way the data has been observed, analyzed, or reported. Such a discrepancy is not in the data, but rather in the method of dealing with it. The kind of phonological analysis that has been assumed can have a significant bearing on the list of consonant clusters that are recognized. For example, use can be analyzed as beginning with either a consonant or a vowel. The first analysis will produce several consonant clusters that will be nonexistent under the second analysis: /by-/ bugle, /fy-/ few, /hy-/ hue, /ky-/ cue, /my-/ mute, /py-/ pupil, /sky-/ skew, /spy-/ spume, jvy-j view. The distinction between, for example, /fyuw/ and /fiu/ is likely to be a difference not in the data, but only in how the data is accounted for. The presence or absence on a list of such clusters as those above tells, therefore, more about the analysis than it does about the language. Because voicing is nondistinctive in the environment /#s_V/, for example spa, more than one analysis of obstruents in that environment is possible: /sp-, sb-, sP-/, in the last of which /P/ represents an archiphoneme. The /sb-/ analysis is preferred by Hultzen and the /sP-/ analysis by Twaddell.6 The analysis of the affricates as /£, j/ or /t§, dz/ or /ty, dy/ will obviously have a bearing on phonotactics, as will the possible analysis of /§, z/ as /sy, zy/. So too, the question of the onset of which (in dialects where it is not homophonous with witch) as monosegmental / M/ versus bisegmental /hw/ may be extended to the treatment of voiceless obstruents like /t/ and /s/ as sequences, i.e. /hd/ and /hz/, with obvious consequences for phonotactic statements. The amount of such "reanalysis" that is possible is very great but essentially trivial. Postvocalic j-rj offers a problem in analysis. On the grounds that jrj is a semivowel or a feature of rhotacism on the preceding vowel, some lists automatically exclude codas such as /-rb/ curb, /-rC/ arch, j-vdj beard, /-rf/ scarf, /-rg/ morgue, merge, /-rk/ mark, /-rl/ curl, /-rm/ storm, /-rn/ earn, /-rp/ harp, /-rs/ force, /-rS/ marsh, /-rSt/ borscht, /-rt/ part, /-r9/ north, and /-rv/ curve. Dialect variation is also relevant to the question of whether one records final clusters with postvocalic /-r/. Some lists recognize final clusters with postvocalic /-w/ and j-yj: /-wb/ robe, /-wC/ couch, /-wd/ crowd, /-wf/ loaf, /-wg/ rogue, /-wj/ scrooge; j-ykj ache, j-y\j oil, /-ym/ seem, /-yp/ ape, j-yxj tire, /-ys/ rice, and so on. The 6 Lee S. Hultzen, "Voiceless Lenis Stops in Prevocalic Clusters," Word, XVIII (1962), 307-12; cf. Leigh Lisker, Word, XIX (1963), 376-87. W. Freeman Twaddell, On Defining the Phoneme, Language Monographs 16 (Baltimore: Waverly, 1935), p. 49. 210 JOHN ALGEO inventory of such clusters is very large because /-w/ and /-y/ occur before most, although not all, of the other clusters. If Trager-Smith postvocalic /-h/ is part of one's analysis and if that /-h/ is regarded as a consonant in denning clusters, another extensive list of clusters must be made, including, for example, /-hrldz/ worlds. It is clear that the presence or absence of such clusters in an inventory tells nothing about the consonant sequences of English, but only something about the way vocalic nuclei have been analyzed. Some clusters are reported perhaps because of quirks in the linguist's observation of the data. Bloomfield (p. 133) lists /-5m/ in rhythm and /-zm/ in chasm, and by general rule implies /-Smd, -5mz, -zmd, -zmz/. But the words in question are disyllables, and, as Kenyon noted some time ago, the consonant sequences in question do not occur, for the nasal in such words is immediately preceded by a vocalic segment: [nSam, kaezsm].7 Sivertsen (p. 71) reports /ng-/ in the name Ngami on the authority of Daniel Jones; but the position of Jones's stress mark clearly indicates that the initial nasal is syllabic before /g/ and thus the two consonants are not an onset cluster.8 Most studies of English phonotactics have been concerned to find general rules governing the permissible sequences of sounds, for example, that geminate sounds may not occur in a cluster, that obstruents in the same cluster must agree in voicing, that the order in which consonants can occur in an onset cluster is (to some extent) a mirror image of the order in which they can occur in a coda, and so forth. (None of these rules, incidentally, are wholly exceptionless.) Some studies have provided more elaborate general rules defining permissible sequences. The more general a rule is, however, the more likely it is to permit some sequences that are not actually attested (or to prohibit some that are). Thus, Whorf's well-known formula generates such unattested sequences as /-fOt/, /-lbzd/, and /-ksGst/. L. G. Jones has rules that permit sequences like /-bdzd/, /-Ctst/, /-ljdz/, and /-rkts/. Other studies predict yet other clusters. Some of these hypothetical sequences are easily imaginable; others seem less probable. In those studies that include rules, as distinct from lists, more than 130 unattested clusters are predicted by some general rule or other and are, from the standpoint of occurring clusters, instances of overgeneralization. 3. Discrepancies of Word Class. By no means all discrepancies between phonotactic lists are due to the mechanics of the description. Some result from differences in the range of lexical items covered by a description. All 7 John S. Kenyon, "Syllabic Consonants in Dictionaries," American Speech, XXXI (1956), 245-51, here 248. 8 Daniel Jones, English Pronouncing Dictionary, 11th ed. (London: Dent, 1956), s.v. WHAT CONSONANT CLUSTERS ARE POSSIBLE? 211 phonotactic grammars try to account for the common, everyday vocabulary, but some include also special kinds of words with clusters not in the common vocabulary, whereas other descriptions avoid such words. Proper names may contain clusters that are unusual in appellatives. Thus /bw-/ is found in place names like Buenos Aires, Buena Vista, and Buena Park. The Argentinian capital is also pronounced /bow-/ or /boy-/, and the Mexican and California cities have variants beginning /byuw-/, it being typical of such words that they develop alternative pronunciations with more "normal" sound sequences. The given names Gwen, Gwyn, and their longer forms have /gw-/, which occurs also in more or less foreign appellatives like guava and guano and in the dialectal gwine. Other initial clusters in names are /dn-/ Dnieper, /de-/ Dvorak (also the technical term dvandva), /pn-/ Pnompenh, /sny-/ Snewin, /tl-/ Tlingit, /vl-/ Vladivostok or Vlasic, and /zw-/ Zouave or Zwingli. The final cluster /-mk/ has been recorded for Hamtramck, although the city in Michigan has a pronunciation with a svarabhakti vowel /-mik/, which breaks up a cluster that otherwise violates universal expectations about homorganic sequences of nasal and stop. Other final clusters in words of this sort are /-nf/ Banff, /-nsk/ Minsk, /-n§/ Blanche, /-pf/ Zipf /-rnst/ Ernst, /-rpst/ Harpst, and I-ft) La Farge. Clusters in loanwords of relatively recent date differ from those in the native or the thoroughly naturalized vocabulary. The Swahili loanword bwana has /bw-/, already mentioned in connection with proper names. Other initial clusters that are attested in distinctly foreign words are /fw-/ foie gras, /fy-/ fjord (before /-uw/ as in few, the cluster is completely normal), /kn-/ knish, /kg-/ Kshatriya, /mw-/ moire, /nw-/ noir, /pf-/pfennig, /si-/ schlock, /5m-/ schmaltz, /Sn-/ schnitzel, /St-/ shtick, /sw-/ schwa (sometimes normalized as /sawa/), /vw-/ voyageur, /zbr-/ sbrinz, /zl-/ zloty, /iw-/ joie de vivre. Final clusters of the sort are /-nil blancmange and /-r§5/ borsch. Some clusters occur in only a few words or, at the extreme, in a single word. Such words may themselves be of low frequency, some extremely rare. Because of the limited number of items in which such a cluster occurs and because of the rarity of the items, the cluster may be nonoccurring for some English-speakers. Examples are /gy-/ gules, /sf-/ sphere, sphinx, sforzando, sfumato, sphagnum, sphincter, and so on (/sf-/ being the most common of the sequences mentioned in this paragraph), /sfr-/ sphragistics, /ski-/ sclaff sklent, sclerosis, /smy-/ smew, /s0-/ sthenic, /vr-/ vraic, /zy-/ zeugma. A final cluster of the kind is /-rsk/ torsk. Obsolete or archaic words may preserve consonant clusters that otherwise do not occur: /zbl-/ 'sblood, /zd-/ "sdeath. 212 JOHN ALGEO Some sequences occur only in nonce forms. Hultzen mentions having seen ACTH, the abbreviation for adrenocorticotrophic hormone, spelled in lower case as acth, which may imply an otherwise unattested final cluster /-k9/. Hill (p. 81) cites /-pft/ in Zipfed, preterit of the verb Zipf 'analyze language in the manner of G. K. Zipf.' Imitative words may include clusters that are rare or nonexistent elsewhere in the vocabulary: /vr-/ vroom 'sound of an object, such as a sports car, passing at high speed,' /§1-/ schloop 'sound, for example, of water draining from a sink,' /pf-/ phffft (title of a 1954 motion picture, pronounced either without a vowel [pt] or more conventionally /pfit/). Ejaculations may involve not only unusual combinations, but unusual sounds as well. Because they are conventional imitations of nonspeech noises, they are on the borderline between language and nonlanguage. Thus, the ejaculation tsk-tsk, originally a spelling to represent the non-speech lamino-palatal click used in expressing disapproval, may be given a conventional pronunciation /tisk tisk/, which is sometimes substituted for the click and is normal in both sounds and combination.9 Although it is an odd combination in being vowelless, pst consists entirely of normal English speech sounds. On the other hand, the ejaculation spelled yecch or the like is often pronounced with a strong palatal fricative [yec], a sound that does not occur in "normal" Modern English words. The ejaculation spelled whew is often pronounced [wyu], which is odd both in the voiceless vowel and the cluster of two semivowels (although /hw-/ and /hy-/ are both regular in some forms of English, /hwy-/ is otherwise unexampled). Slang expressions also include otherwise rare clusters: /§m-/ as in data-shmata or any of the innumerable similar reduplicative formations. So too, /Sn-/ in schnook. Slang vocabulary is also characteristic of a special register or style, and it therefore overlaps with the next category. 4. Discrepancies of Language Variety. When different descriptions restrict themselves to different language varieties, a consequence is likely to be discrepancies in the consonant clusters they recognize. Language varieties that are especially relevant are geographical or social dialects and various styles. One of the ways dialects differ is in their sequences of consonants. Some forms of English allow coronal sounds to be followed by the coronal semivowel in stressed syllable onsets, whereas others do not. Those that permit the combination have /dy-/ due, fly-/ lute, /ny-/ news, /sty-/ stew, /sy-/ sue, /ty-/ tube, /9y-/ thew, and perhaps jty-j chew, /Jy-/ juice, and sly-/ 9 This example and several other like ones are cited by Thomas Pyles, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 2d ed. (New York: Harcourt, 1971), pp. 277-79. WHAT CONSONANT CLUSTERS ARE POSSIBLE? 213 sluice; /ry-/ rule is sometimes included in this group, but the sequence is suspicious ([nul] is attested but uncommon). However, even those speakers who lack /dy-/ in due may have it in do you think so? /dys . . ./. So also some dialects have /hw-/ which; others do not. Most forms of English have /sr-/ in shred and similar words, but many speakers in the southeast of the United States have /sr-/ instead. (In the majority pronunciation, /sr-/ may occur in a loanword like sri 'Indian title of respect' or in the place name Srinagar.) Dialect variation affects final clusters also: bulge may end in either /-IT/ or and similarly the preterit bulged in /-ljd/ or /-12d/. Some speakers distinguish welsh with /-IS/ from welch with /-1C/; others do not. Stylistic differences are more striking. In what is sometimes thought of as "rapid" speech, but in fact is everyday informal style, there is a good deal of syncope of unstressed vowels, in comparison with the pronunciation of citation forms.10 Syncope, especially when it affects the initial syllable of a word stressed on the second syllable, as in /jfrsef/ for giraffe, produces some consonant clusters that do not occur, or only very rarely occur, in unsyncopated style. Examples of such consonant clusters, which are not recorded in any treatment of English phonotactics, except incidentally as they happen to occur also in proper names or the like, are /&-/ in the second syllable of actually /aekcliy/ (strictly speaking, part of interlude rather than onset; several such examples are cited here); /£r-/ cherubic; /6w-/ actual /aekCwal/; /dl-/ dilemma, delightful, Duluth; /fn-/ fanatic, finagle, financial; /Jl-/ jalopy, gelatinous; /jr-/ giraffe, Jerusalem, juridical, geranium; /kn-/ canoe, canary, canal; /ml-/ molesting, militia, malinger; /mr-/ maroon, meringue, marine, and the second syllable of admiral /sedmral/; /pt-/ potato; /sg-/ spaghetti /sgediy/; /sr-/ serenity, sarong, sorority, surround; /§v-/ chivalric; /tl-/ telegraphy and the second syllable of capitalist /kaeptlist/; /tm-/ tomato, tamale; /vl-/ valise, validity, velocity; /vn-/ vernacular (with prior loss of the first r by dissimilation), Vanessa; /vr-/ veranda, variety, virility; /wl-/ usually /yuzwliy/.11 As a consequence of their morphemic structure, some words have consonant sequences that violate the rule of voicing harmony in obstruent clusters. Assimilation in informal style may restore that harmony and create pronunciation variants for these words: /-dst, -tst/ midst, /-d9, -tO/ width, /-d9s, -t6s/ widths, /ndO, -ntG/ thousandth, /-nd0s, nt9s/ thousandths. Some clusters occur only or chiefly in a spelling-conscious style of pronunciation of words for which there is an alternative pronunciation without the cluster. Thus, /pw-/ is found in pueblo, puissant, and Puerto Rico, but the 10 John Algeo, "Syncope in English," South Atlantic Bulletin, XXXIX, no. 4 (November 1974), 22-30; "Syncope and the Phonotactics of English," General Linguistics, 15 (1975), 71-78. 11 For a number of these examples, I am indebted to James B. McMillan. 214 JOHN ALGEO first is also pronounced /puweblow/ (the pronunciation regularly used by newscasters in referring to the name of an American ship involved in an incident with North Korea some years ago), the second has a traditional pronunciation beginning /pyuwis-/, and the third has a popular variant Porto. Other such clusters with their alternatives are /bd-/ or /d-/ bdellium, /dn-/ or /dsn-/ or /n-/ Dnieper, /f0-/ or /0-/ or ji-jphthisis, /gn-/ or /n-/gneiss, /gz-/ or jz-j xylophone, /mn-/ or jn-j Mnemosyne, /pny-/ or /n-/ pneuma, /ps-/ or /s-/psoriasis (the heartbreak of which is doubtless much aggravated by the /p/), /psy-/ or /s-/ pseudo, /pS-/ or /§-/ /w/iaw, /pt-/ or /t-/ pterodactyl, /sgr-/ or /skr-/ or /zgr-/ sgraffito, /sv-/ or /sf-/ sue/te, /tm-/ or /tsm-/ or /m-/ fraes/s, /ts-/ or /t-/ or /s-/ tsetse, /tsw-/ or /zw-/ or /sw-/ zwieback (when /tsv-/ is recorded it is generally considered a foreign pronunciation). Many of the foregoing clusters show the influence of orthography, but the final cluster /-bst/, recorded for Pabst, if it really occurs, represents a triumph of spelling over custom, articulation, and etymology. The /-In/ in kiln likewise is due to spelling, although the same cluster occurs in swollen as the result of syncope. An orthographically supported /-mb/ occurs in gamb, rhomb, and rhumb, although not in the native lamb or the naturalized plumb. Isthmus and its derivatives have a spelling pronunciation with the otherwise nonoccurring interlude /-s9m-/, which presupposes either /-s0/ or /6m-/. Many theoretically possible clusters do not actually occur, at least in normal speech as opposed to spelling-conscious styles such as the careful articulation of citation forms. In normal speech there is a strong tendency to simplify clusters.12 Thus the following words often, perhaps usually, have the clusters indicated rather than those suggested by their spellings: rafts /-fs/, fifths /-fs/ or /-6s/, texts /-ks/ (which has as an odd consequence that an English noun forms its surface plural by dropping the final consonant of the singular: singular /tekst/, plural jteks/), facts /-ks/, twelfth /-10/, twelfths /-lfs/ or /-10s/ or even /-Is/, sends /-nz/, months /-ns/ or /-nts/, scripts /-ps/, worlds /-rlz/, asked /-st/, and so on for a good many others. A noteworthy simplification is that of the -s inflected form of words ending in -st, for example the plural of test. Besides the citation form /tests/, there is in some speechways a plural /tess/, which contrasts with /tes/ Tess (a girl's name), producing at least a surface contrast between short (or single) and long (or double) /s/ in final position. In other speechways the contrast is not maintained, so that the plural of/test/ is /tes/. Consonant clusters that are actually pronounced in normal connected speech are probably a good deal fewer in number and on the whole less complex in structure than those that are possible in citation forms. It is a noteworthy fact about English usage 12 Bertil Malmberg, "Stability and Instability of Syllabic Structures," Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Basel: Karger, 1965), pp. 403-8. WHAT CONSONANT CLUSTERS ARE POSSIBLE? 215 that many speakers who regularly pronounce reduced clusters would, if asked to express an opinion about their acceptability, unhesitatingly reject them as "careless," "sloppy," or "substandard." Special imitative styles of speech may also include unusual clusters. The "drunk" style (which is, of course, not the actual speech pattern of an inebriate but rather a conventionalized representation of such speech) involves a general substitution of /§/ for /s/, consequently producing such clusters as /§k-/ shchoolfor school and /Sp-/ shpot for spot. The "drunk" style has a bearing on an old quarrel—whether the affricate in church should be analyzed as a unitary /£/ or a binary /t§/.13 Initial /ts/ is rare in English, so it is difficult to use it effectively as a test, but final /ts/ is very common, for instance in let's or cats. In "drunk" style those items become /lets'/ and /kaetsV, contrasting with /le£/ letch and /kae£/ catch. The existence of this contrast, however marginal it may be, would seem to require the unitary analysis in autonomous phonology. Another special variety of language, the "lisping" or "sissy" style, used conventionally to represent the speech of male homosexuals, involves a similar substitution of /0/ for /s/, thus producing a large range of clusters that have gone unrecorded in studies of English phonotactics, such as /91/ thlink for slink, /0t/ thtop for stop, and /0m/ thmile for smile. Yet another special variety is the "baby-talk" or "Elmer Fudd" style, in which /w/ replaces /r/, as in /spw/ spwy for spry and /fw/ fwame for frame. 5. Discrepancies of Linguistic Component. The component of a linguistic description for which phonotactic rules are written will have a bearing on the clusters that are predicted. Lexical redundancy rules that apply to underlying forms will not predict the same clusters as phonotactic rules that account for surface systematic phonetic, or for autonomous phonemic, forms, although if the rules are properly framed, lexical redundancy rules plus phonological rules ought to yield the surface clusters. Nevertheless, vocabulary items in the lexicon and syllable strings in the stream of speech do not have the same phonotactic structure. Tactic discrepancies between underlying and surface levels are partially dependent on style or dialect, as shown by some examples already cited. In addition, for many speakers of English, the sequence nasal plus voiceless fricative and the sequence nasal plus homorganic voiceless stop plus voiceless fricative are not contrastive; for words in which the former sequence would be expected etymologically or morphologically, an intrusive stop creates the latter. Examples are: /-mf, -mpf/ lymph, /-mfs, 13 W. Freeman Twaddell, "/*