Talk:Phonotactics

"kn-"?

The claim that "kn" does not exist in English is a little unclear: what does it actually mean? Certainly the sequence of consonants kn appears ("knight", "knife") although not pronounced in a reasonable way. But the sounds appear: strychnine (pronounced strik-nine). So perhaps this is a more subtle issue than it appears?

I just corrected the "kn" issue to make it correct. The article speaks of phonemes, not letters. Matt gies 01:59, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Would the words "canoe" or "canuck" not count as a "kn"? I know there is an a there but I personally don't even put a schwa between them (maybe that's just how it is in my parts, if you haven't already figured out where I'm from). - Chris, May 1st 2006

Another good example would be that in English, /vl/ is forbidden word-initial, but /fl/ is allowed. Sanxiyn 05:53, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"slips" and "pusl" are is not very good examples since you get "wrestle", "nestle" etc. /sl/ at the coda seems to be very English. --217.86.19.94 06:41, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[Edit: Kasapo@gmail.com]

The sequence of consonants may occur, but who ever said that english pronunciation follows any rules? Well ok, maybe somebody, but anyway, the issue at heart here is phonetics. Phonetically, english knight and knife do knot begin with /k/ the voiceless velar stop. So, the claim that the english language phonotactically avoids the /kn/ consonant cluster (phonetically) is still true.

By the way, in the word "wrestle", what "le" signifies is a syllabic "l", that is, /l=/ in X-SAMPA. This is not the same sort of "l" that was being spoken of in the case of "pusl", as it's acting effectively as a vowel, rather than as a consonant. --146.151.47.17 13:49, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(I edited this little discussion and put it in a subheading rather than just being on the page here) Chris: I'm from Minnesota, and I've definitely heard canoe pronounced [knu]. Still, this is very localized and not at all generalizable to American English, so the statement that [kn] does not exist in "English" is still, in general, true.

What is not mentioned in the article and is extremely relevant to the discussion here is the issue of the sonority scale. This is a list of manners of articulation arranged from highest sonority to least:

oral stop > affricate > nasal > approximant

And depending on the language it may further break up the categories or have slight rearrangements depending on the sonority with which a particular class of sounds is produced. This scale is useful because rather than argue about what clusters are permissible, you can say that within an onset you may have a minimum separation of 3 in English: You can't have a stop+nasal onset ([kn-]) and this also means you can't have an affricate+approximant onset ([tʃɹ-] although this is sometimes phonetically realized, but this is a moot point). Someday this should be incorporated into the article, but I don't have time just yet.

Additionally: phonotactics deals with the syllable, and thus using examples like strychnine, hackney, or acknowledge are irrelevant: the k and n in each do not occur within the same syllable, as predicted by the sonority sequencing in the previous paragraph. These words would be syllabified as [stɹɪk.naɪn], [hæk.ni], and [æk.nɔ.lɪdʒ], respectively.

And additionally, if you point out that the [s] at the beginning of "strychnine" would seem to violate the sonority sequencing principle, you would be right. Languages may have an "index," which refers to a sound ([s]) or type of sound ("liquid") which may violate the sonority sequencing and only occurs on a word boundary.

Okay, I think that's all I've got. Hopefully someone can come along to edit the article, since I don't think I'll be able to any time too soon. --Coyne025 05:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"pack a marbles"

convenience store much? people pronounce marlboro "marble" quite a bit. possibly 40% of the time. w/ "marlboro light" - you'r notably more likely to hear "marble light". someone incorporate that. KzzRzz Knocker 06:11, 16 April 2006 (UTC),,,[reply]