1. occurring or situated immediately before a consonant sound
Usage: linguistics; phonetics

Examples

• In English, the vowel in 'hand' is in a preconsonantal position before the /nd/ cluster.
• Preconsonantal nasals often undergo assimilation in many languages.
• The preconsonantal environment affects how vowels are pronounced in this dialect.
• Linguists study preconsonantal consonant clusters to understand phonotactic patterns.
• The /l/ in 'milk' appears in a preconsonantal context before the final /k/.