Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The set of allowed arrangements or sequences of speech sounds in a given language. A word beginning with the consonant cluster (zv), for example, violates the phonotactics of English, but not of Russian.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A branch of phonology that deals with the restrictions a language applies to combinations of phonemes.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[phono– + tactics, arrangement of linguistic units; see tactics.]

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