The Syllabic Structure of Spoken Words

Evidence from the Syllabification of Intervocalic Consonants

Bibliographic Data

ID10255686
AuthorsNiels O Schiller (0000-0002-0392-7608, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, corresponding author), Andrea S Meyer (0000-0002-7735-9025, Max Planck Society), Antje S Meyer (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen), Willem J M Levelt (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen)
Year1997
Volume40
Issue2
Pages103-140
Publication date1997-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage and Speech (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-8309 • E-ISSN: 1756-6053
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002383099704000202
PMID9509576
OpenAlexW2134549933
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited57

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants following short vowels, long vowels, and schwa in Dutch. Special interest was paid to words such as letter [l∊[UNKNOWN]t] “id.,” where a short vowel is followed by a single consonant. On phonological grounds one may predict that the first syllable should always be closed, but earlier psycholinguistic research had shown that speakers tend to leave these syllables open. In our experiments, bisyllabic word forms were presented aurally, and participants produced their syllables in reversed order (Experiments 1 through 5), or repeated the words inserting a pause between the syllables (Experiment 6). The results showed that participants generally closed syllables with a short vowel. However, in a significant number of the cases they produced open short vowel syllables. Syllables containing schwa, like syllables with a long vowel, were hardly ever closed. Word stress, the phonetic quality of the vowel in the first syllable, and the experimental context influenced syllabification. Taken together, the experiments show that native speakers syllabify bisyllabic Dutch nouns in accordance with a small set of prosodic output constraints. To account for the variability of the results, we propose that these constraints differ in their probabilities of being applied

Consonant · Context (archaeology · Linguistics · Schwa · Speech recognition · Stress (linguistics · Syllabic verse · Syllabification · Syllable · Vowel · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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