phonotax

Noun

phonotax (countable and uncountable, plural phonotaxes)

1. (uncommon) The total sum of a language's phonological or phonotactic rules.
   • It is crucial for the phoneme structure of Finnish — traditionally /d/ has not been included in the Finnish phonotax, but it fulfils the criteria of a phoneme (Karlsson, 1983: 66-7).1990, Jarmo Lainio, “Sweden Finnish — development or deterioration?”, in Durk Gorter, editor, Fourth International Conference on Minority Languages: Western and Eastern European papers, Multilingual...
   • On the level of word-shape, the phonotax of a language is a first determinant of its style, but the pattern of distribution within that frame is perhaps of equal importance.2009, Anders Stenström Beregond, “Phonotactic Preferences in the Root Repertories of "Qenya Lexicon" and "The Etymologies"”, in Arda Philology 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on...