Consolidation normally occurs at the end of a lesson. It can be compared
with revision, which takes place at a later time and serves to remind
students of previously presented material.consonantn
a speech sound where the airstream from the lungs is either completely
blocked (stop), partially blocked (lateral) or where the opening is so
narrow that the air escapes with audible friction (fricative). With some
consonants (nasals) the airstream is blocked in the mouth but allowed
to escape through the nose.
With the other group of speech sounds, the vowels, the air from the lungs
is not blocked.
There are a number of cases where the distinction is not clear-cut, such as
the /j/ at the beginning of the English word yes where there is only very
slight friction, and linguists have sometimes called these semi-vowelsor
semi-consonants.
see also manner of articulation, place of articulation
consonant clustern
a sequence of two or more consonants at the beginning of a syllable (e.g.
/spl/ in splash) or the end of a syllable (e.g. /sts/ in tests). In English, with
clusters of two, either the first sound is /s/ or the second one is an approxi-
mant(l, r, w, or y); in initial clusters of three, the first sound is always /s/,
the second is a voiceless stop (/p,t,k /), and the third is an approximant. In
final position, many more clusters are possible, but most final clusters of
three or more consonants are formed as the result of adding a plural or past
tense inflection to a stemand therefore end in /t /, /d /, /s / or /z /.
Languages differ greatly in the ways in which consonants can form clusters
and in which positions in a word clusters can occur. Spanish, for example,
permits fewer clusters than English, and the Polynesian languages do not
permit any clusters.
consonant cluster reductionn
also consonant cluster simplification
a process of simplifying consonant clusters by omission of one or more
consonants, especially common in casual speech. For example, English final
clusters of three or four consonants are often simplified by dropping a
middle consonant, e.g. when pronouncing facts(which ends in /kts/) as if
it were facks(ending in /ks/). Consonant cluster reduction is also common
in language learning when the target language permits sequences of
consonants that do not occur in the learner’s native language.
see also epenthesis
consonant