Intervokaliniai priebalsiai: trinarės, keturnarės ir penkianarės grupės
Intervocalic Consonants: 3-nomial, 4-nomial, and 5-nomial Clusters

Summary/Abstract: General syntagmatic relationships of Lithuanian consonants are described by A. Pupkis and A. Girdenis. This paper focuses on 3-nomial, 4-nomial, and 5-nomial clusters of intervocalic consonants. Such clusters are rare and comprise just 4% of all intervocalic consonant clusters. The goal of our investigations was to measure the actual usage of consonant cluster types in Lithuanian. Our investigations were based on the data of 3 million consonant clusters taken from the Text corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian language at VMU. The investigations showed that all theoretically possible consonant cluster types are present in Lithuanian. However, their frequency significantly differs. RTR, TST and RST type clusters comprise more than a half of all investigated cases. Clusters having consonants of the same class (T, S, or R) adjacently are rare. It is common that adjacent consonants have the similar place of articulation. Clusters of front consonants are more frequent. RTST, TSTR, RTSR, RSTR type consonant clusters represent 95 % of all 4-nomial consonant clusters. Only isolated samples representing other 4-nomial clusters were found. 3-nomial and 4-nomial consonant clusters are clearly dominated by unvoiced consonants. It is common to find 4-nomial clusters which are hard to pronounce because of they contain adjacent consonants differing by their place of articulation. 5-nomial clusters are not common to Lithuanian. 4-nomial and 5-nomial clusters are discovered only at the morphemic boundaries. The results presented in this paper might interest not only for linguists. They might have practical value both for speech therapists and language technology engineers.

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