Liquids as syllable peaks: Preconsonantal laterals in closed syllables of American English

Abstract

Liquids occur in all syllable positions in English and may behave as syllable peaks or nuclei (Proctor, 2009). Previous work has examined syllabic liquids in open syllables like little and doctor, in the onset of closed syllables like prayed and played (Price, 1980) and has established that rhotics are syllabic in certain closed syllables like bird, church, and learn. However, little work has investigated whether laterals can serve as syllable peaks in preconsonantal position. This study examines potential syllabic liquids in closed and open syllables in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (Du Bois etal., 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005), focusing on CVlC syllables, such as bulk, filled, and help, which are structurally similar to the aforementioned contexts containing syllabic rhotics. Vowel and lateral duration and intensity are measured to determine whether these laterals display properties associated with syllabicity (Price, 1980). Additionally, the first and second formants of the vowel and lateral are measured at 10 ms intervals to examine the vowel-like behavior of the liquids (Gick, 2002). Further influencing factors are considered, including morphology, surrounding vowel quality, place and manner of surrounding consonants, intonation, and other prosodic elements to determine the environments in which lateral syllabicity occurs.