The present note has two purposes: to discuss the relation of intervocalic to initial and final consonant sequences in Spanish; and on the basis of the Spanish data to suggest a general model for describing the relative probability of occurrence of intervocalic clusters.

Sol Saporta has presented data which are claimed to confirm his hypothesis that ‘the average frequency of a consonant cluster is a function of the difference between the phonemes in the cluster: low frequencies are expected for clusters which are either extremely similar or extremely dissimilar; high frequencies are expected for clusters which are at neither extreme.‘ The difference between any two phonemes is measured as the number of distinctive features in which they are different. A second article, in which Saporta collaborated with Kathryn C. Keller, considers the possibility that the results might have been expected by chance. The concerns of the present note are (1) to point out that Keller and Saporta did not adequately resolve the question of the chance nature of the results, (2) to present the appropriate mathematical and statistical techniques for doing so, and (3) to make new assessments of some of the data analyzed by Keller and Saporta.