A Contrastive Study of English and Manipuri Consonant Clusters

Every language has its own phonotactic constraints. Phonotactics comes from the ancient Greek phone which means voice, sound and taktikos means having to do with arranging. Phonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonants clusters and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints. Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, in Japanese, consonant clusters like /st/ do not occur. Likewise, the sounds/kn/ and /gn/ are not permitted at the beginning of a word in Modern English but are in German and Dutch, and were permitted in Old Middle English. English and Manipuri too have their own phonotactic constraints. The difference in them will create a problem in learning the language vice-versa. The difference will hinder the desired level of pronunciation. Therefore it is a must to study the area of differences and thus identifying the difficulties and hence trying to find out the possible remedies. In this paper, a contrastive study of the consonant clusters in English and Manipuri is done. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section deals with introduction and the detailed study of English consonant clusters. The second section deals with the Manipuri consonant clusters. The third chapter is the conclusion in which the contrastive study of the consonant clusters of the English and Manipuri are done. In this section the main finds are laid down.