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In the languages I know more about I can't think of any cases of consonant phoneme clusters that are not made up entirely of consonant phonemes which also occur on their own in the language.
But I'm wondering if this is not a universal phonology rule at all and if that's the case, what are some languages and consonant clusters that don't fit this pattern?
If there were some consonant than only appeared in clusters, the standard analytic assumption would be to reduce it to some consonant that does not appear in clusters, thus if [γ] only appeared in clusters and [h] never did, then we would simply assume that [γ] comes from /h/. To show that such an analysis is impossible, you'd have to have a language that allows pretty much any possible cluster, which is extremely rare. That said: glottal stop only appears before nasals in North Saami. Which leads to another path of re-analysis, where "glottal stop" is interpreted as the surface realization of glottalization on nasals.
Although the question is perfectly sensible, I think there are so many ways to wiggle that it is effectively impossible to answer.
Following up given OPs question... I'd be happy with rewording to eliminate wiggle-room, but I don't know what that wording would be. I don't think the problem is ambiguity in the question, it's the looseness of our underlying theories. Reduction in underlying inventory has long been a desideratum of analysis, hence we don't posit both aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in the English underlying inventory. This means that you are virtually compelled to analyze out of existence putative cases of segments with defective distribution. What principle could we adopt that would prevent this practice (and should we)?
If the question is stated in terms of phonetic outputs, then the answer is "there are plenty", such as English [ɬ] which only appears after [s,f] and aspirated stops; or [ʈ] (in some dialects, phonetic value approximate) which only appears before /ɹ/. So to favor a positive answer to the question, we would need to limit abstract analysis; to favor a negative answer, we would encourage (require) such analysis.
In many dialects of Pashto, xʷ only occurs in clusters. It only occurs in clusters (mostly before [r ~ ɾ] and [l]). It never occurs alone and contrasts with x (and xw in some words) for example /xre/ means “(you're a) female donkey” and /xʷre/ [with rising intonation] means “(are you) eating?”. Some other examples and minimal pairs are:
I think you need to think about the theoretical implications of what you are asking. The question presupposes that you know going into an analysis that a certain sequence of speech sounds in a language is the realization of multiple phonemes in that language. But the usual criterion for assigning phonemic status to the subparts of a sequence of speech sounds is precisely what you are saying would be lacking for this hypothetical language--the observation that the subparts (or sounds that could conceivably be realizations of those subparts) occur independently elsewhere in the language.
Imagine a language that is just like English except that it doesn't have [t] or [ʃ] in isolation (while still having [tʃ]). The most sensible phonemic analysis of such data would be that [tʃ] represents a single phoneme, /tʃ/. Now substitute any other sounds for [t] and [ʃ] in this example. How would you ever argue that the constituent sounds represent individual phonemes if they never appear independently?
This depends on whether we are talking about phonology or about phonetics (you do not specify). If it is phonetics then there are lots of examples of allophones that occur only in clusters and not on their own, for example in English the unaspirated [t] in ‘stop’. But I suspect that phonology is another matter.
phonology tag but I'll improve the question text to match the tagging.
Oct 20, 2014 at 11:28
As one can see there are still words derived from it, like Тпрусё and some variations like птрути. I could ask if there are more cases if interested.
In Sanskrit I'm not aware of such a phenomena. You can see my list of ligatures (=consonant clusters) at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nagari/nW3k9-gFKao Liste-460-Rigveda-Ligaturen-Statistik-G.pdf
