1162: Syllable Structures Feb 13, 2018

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When phoneticians describe the arrangements of consonants and vowels, in a syllable, they will often just denote them with C and V respectively, so 'cat' would be CVC, and 'strengths' [stɹɛŋθs] would be CCCVCCC. This is useful for talking about the differences between English and Hawai'ian, where there are no consonant clusters, and all syllables will be CV, V, or VC, but not useful for explaining why [vdgihlp]—which is also CCCVCCC—can't be an English word. Though admittedly that was an extreme example, there are plenty of languages, famously Slavic and Caucasus languages that allow many more; Kartvelian regularly contains clusters of 6-consonant, and contains words like /ɡvbrdɣvnis/ with 8 or more, in this case CCCCCCCCVC. Nevertheless, no matter how long strings of consonants can be in a language, there will be constraints on the arrangement thereof. Even normal pairs of consonants, like [sl] at the beginning of English syllables (e.g. 'slip') cannot be reversed as [ls] as a syllable's onset (i.e. 'lsip').

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