The acceptability of initial consonant clusters in Israeli Hebrew is affected by various factors, notably the sonority hierarchy, place and/or manner of articulation, and voicing. This note focuses on two constraints that have received little attention in the literature: one involving voicing, the other reflecting the difficulty of making very fine transitions in manner and place of articulation. It is claimed that constraints on initial consonant clusters are essentially due to the difficulty of effecting articulatory transitions that are either too extreme or too minute, whereas ease-of-articulation favors assimilation, gradual transition, or cluster splitting so as to avoid such transitions. 1. INTRODUCTION
