Syllabification of American English: Evidence from a Large-scale Experiment. Part I^∗

Abstract

4990 bi-syllabic English words were syllabified by about 22 native speakers who choose between different slash divisions (e.g. photon: FOW/TAHN, FOWT/AHN). Results of the regression analyses of the items with one medial consonant are discussed. Consistent with previous studies, consonants were drawn to stressed syllables, and more sonorant consonants were more often placed in the coda. A model in which syllables are made to be as word-like as possible is supported; syllables were often created that begin and end in the same phonemes that are legal word-initially and finally, and syllabifications tended to follow morphological boundaries. Orthographic conventions, such as not placing ck or ll syllable-initially were also followed.

Notes

We thank Lindsey Clasen, David Balota, Brett Kessler, Jennifer Russ and Martha Storandt for their assistance and comments. We are particularly grateful to Mark Davies for his help with the online survey and Daniel Ezra Johnson for helping with the statistical analysis.

¹dictionary.cambridge.org

² www.merriam-webster.com

³IRB approval was granted from the BYU Office of Research and Creative Activities.

⁴linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/eddingtond/BYU Syllabification Survey.xls

⁵Logistic regression requires at least one instance of every combination of variables. Subdividing obstruents into fricatives, stops or affricates created empty cells, which would make the statistical analysis difficult.

⁶The type of medial consonant was merged into sonorant versus obstruent in order to avoid lack of independence between variables in these analyses.