The Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP)Selkirk, E. (1984). On the major class features and syllable theory. In Aronoff & Oehrle (eds.) Language Sound Structure: Studies in Phonology. Cambridge: MIT Press. 107-136.Clements, G. N. (1990). The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In J. Kingston and M. E. Beckman (eds.) Papers in Laboratory Phonology I: Between the grammar and the physics of speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 283-333. or Sonority Sequencing Constraint is a phonotactic principle that aims to outline the structure of a

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

in terms of sonority. The SSP states that the

syllable nucleus A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

(syllable center), often a vowel, constitutes a sonority peak that is preceded and/or followed by a sequence of segments – consonants – with progressively decreasing sonority values (i.e., the sonority has to fall toward both edges of the syllable). The sonority values of segments are determined by a

sonority hierarchy A sonority hierarchy or sonority scale is a hierarchical ranking of speech sounds (or phones). Sonority is loosely defined as the loudness of speech sounds relative to other sounds of the same pitch, length and stress, therefore sonority is often ...

, though these differ to some extent from language to language. Typically they are vowel > glide >

liquid A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, a ...

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery ** ...

obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...

(or > fricative >

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...

click Click, Klick and Klik may refer to: Airlines * Click Airways, a UAE airline * Clickair, a Spanish airline * MexicanaClick, a Mexican airline Art, entertainment, and media Fictional characters * Klick (fictional species), an alien race in the g ...

). That is, the segment order in a syllable tends to be of the pattern Ʞ-P-F-N-L-G-V-G-L-N-F-P. The fricative–plosive and nasal–plosive rankings may be reversed. Wright (2004: 51–52) notes, A good example for the SSP in English is the one-syllable word ''trust'': The first consonant in the

syllable onset A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

is ''t'', which is a stop, the lowest on the sonority scale; next is ''r'', a

which is more sonorous, then we have the vowel ''u'' – the sonority peak; next, in the

syllable coda A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...

, is ''s'', a

sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...

, and last is another stop, ''t''. The SSP explains why, for example, "trend" is a valid English word but *''rtedn'' (flipping the order of consonants) is not. Language processing has also been shown experimentally to be sensitive to sonority violations. Some languages possess syllables that violate the SSP ( Russian and dialectal Arabic, for example) while other languages strictly adhere to it, even requiring larger intervals on the sonority scale: In Italian for example, a syllable-initial stop must be followed by either a liquid, a glide or a vowel, but not by a fricative (except: sborrowed words like: , ). Some languages allow a sonority "plateau"; that is, two adjacent

tautosyllabic Two or more segments are tautosyllabic (with each other) if they occur in the same syllable. For instance, the English word "cat", , is monosyllabic and so its three phonemes , and are tautosyllabic. They can also be described as sharing a 'ta ...

consonants with the same sonority level. Modern Hebrew is an example of such language. A number of Indo-European languages that typically follow the SSP will violate it with /s/ + stop clusters. For example, in the English word ''string'' or Italian the more sonorous /s/ comes before a less sonorous sound in the onset. In native English words, no phoneme other than /s/ ever violates the SSP. Latin also was able to violate the principle in this way, however the Vulgar Latin dialects that evolved into the Western Romance languages lost this ability, causing the process of I-

prosthesis In medicine, a prosthesis (plural: prostheses; from grc, πρόσθεσις, prósthesis, addition, application, attachment), or a prosthetic implant, is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through trau ...

to occur, whereby an /i/ was inserted at the beginning of such a word, to make the /s/ instead a coda consonant rather than an onset consonant. As a result, Western Romance languages like Spanish and French will have and (from ) respectively where a non-Western Romance language like Italian has , and even has words such as 'deck-chair'. However, all of the sonority violations noted above occur at word edges, not word-internally. Therefore, some recent phonological accounts postulate that the segments outside of the sonority sequencing may be considered "extrasyllabic consonants", consonants occurring outside of any syllable, and licensed in their language by the word they are part of. English ''string'', for example, would then contain a syllable ringwith a preceding extrasyllabic ''s''.

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Phonology Phonotactics {{phonology-stub