highsonority

Highsonority, often written as high sonority, is a term in phonology describing sounds that are relatively prominent or loud within a language’s sonority scale. It helps explain patterns of syllable structure, phonotactics, and the distribution of consonant clusters by comparing how perceptually prominent different sounds are within a syllable.

The sonority scale orders sounds by relative loudness or openness of articulation. A common formulation from low to high sonority is: stops, fricatives, nasals, liquids, glides, vowels. In this framework, high-sonority sounds include vowels, followed by glides and liquids, and then nasals; these are more sonorous than obstruents such as stops and most fricatives. Note that there are analytical variations across languages and scholars, but the general pattern—vowels being the most sonorous and obstruents the least—remains widely used.

In syllable phonology, high-sonority sounds often play a central role. The Sonority Sequencing Principle predicts that segments within a syllable tend to rise in sonority toward the nucleus, typically a vowel. This makes high-sonority elements favorable as syllable cores and common components of onset clusters, while lower-sonority segments tend to appear in codas. Some languages allow syllabic nasals or liquids, extending the range of high-sonority nuclei in certain phonologies.

Practical implications include forecasting acceptable consonant clusters, explaining syllable density, and informing phonotactic analyses across languages. The concept of high sonority is thus a key tool in understanding why certain sound sequences are preferred or avoided in different linguistic systems. See also: sonority; sonority sequencing principle; phonology.