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Frequency of Consonant Clusters in French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2016

G. L. Bursill-Hall
G. L. Bursill-Hall*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

In a recent article in Language, Sol Saporta pointed out that structural linguists had, for the most part, analysed sequences of phonemes but had ignored the frequencies of combinations. He goes on to produce an interesting and workable hypothesis, i.e. “the average frequency of a consonant cluster is a function of the difference between the phonemes in the cluster; low frequencies are expected for clusters which are either extremely similar or extremely dissimilar; high frequencies are expected for clusters which are at neither extreme.” What should be demonstrated by scholars of linguistics is that the frequency of these combinations is not haphazard.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 1956 , pp. 66 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 1956

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References

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