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
In syllable phonology, high-sonority sounds often play a central role. The Sonority Sequencing Principle predicts that
Practical implications include forecasting acceptable consonant clusters, explaining syllable density, and informing phonotactic analyses across languages.