Phonotactics (in Greek phone = voice and taktikos = something which may be arranged or ordered) is a branch of

phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Ph-cs defines
permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters(сочетания согласных), and vowel sequences by means of
phonotactical constraints(ограничения).
Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, the sounds /kn/ and /ɡn/ are not permitted at the beginning
of a word in Modern English but are in German and Dutch, and were permitted in Old and Middle English.
Syllables have the following internal segmental structure:
1. Onset(начало) (optional)
2. Rime (рифма) (obligatory, comprises Nucleus and Coda):
2.1 Nucleus (осн часть) (obligatory)
2.2 Coda (закл. часть) (optional)
Both onset and coda may be empty, forming a vowel-only syllable, or alternatively, the nucleus can be occupied by a
syllabic consonant (слоговой согл.).

In general, the rules of phonotactics operate around the sonority hierarchy (шкала звучности (по амплитуде
звучания) ), stipulating that the nucleus has maximal sonority(звучность) and that sonority decreases as you move
away from the nucleus. [s] is lower on the sonority hierarchy than [l], so the combination /sl/ is permitted in onsets
and /ls/ is permitted in codas, but /ls/ is not allowed in onsets and /sl/ is not allowed in codas. Hence slips /slɪps/ and
pulse /pʌls/ are possible English words while *lsips and *pusl are not.
This said, in some cases /s/ is "invisible" to the sonority hierarchy; as a fricative, it is more sonorant than the plosive /t/.
However, combinations like [stiːɫ] (steal), which violates the sonority hierarchy, are seen and are even common in
English.
English phonotactics
The English syllable (and word) twelfths /twɛlfθs/ is divided into the onset /tw/, the nucleus /ɛ/, and the coda /lfθs/, and
it can thus be described as CCVCCCC (C = consonant, V = vowel). On this basis it is possible to form rules for which
representations of phoneme classes may fill the cluster. For instance, English allows at most three consonants in an
onset, but among native words under standard accents, phonemes in a three-consonantal onset are limited to the
following scheme:[1]
/s/ + pulmonic + approximant:
• /s/ + /m/ + /j/
• /s/ + /t/ + /j ɹ/
• /s/ + /p/ + /j ɹ l/
• /s/ + /k/ + /j ɹ l w/
This constraint can be observed in the pronunciation of the word blue: originally, the vowel of blue was identical to the
vowel of cue, approximately [iw]. In most dialects of English, [iw] shifted to [juː]. Theoretically, this would produce
**[bljuː]. The cluster [blj], however, infringes the constraint for three-consonantal onsets in English. Therefore, the
pronunciation has been reduced to [bluː] by elision of the [j].
Other languages don't share the same constraint: compare Spanish pliegue [ˈpljeɣe] or French pluie [plɥi].