On the resyllabification of /l/ in English

Abstract

English /l/ is known to be light ([l]) or dark ([ɫ]) when syllable initial or syllable final, respectively. The acoustic difference is that [l]s have lower F1s and higher F2s than [ɫ]s. The effects of varying strengths of boundaries on the resyllabification of /l/ in English have been examined. Speakers were asked to produce two sets of sentences, both of which included /l/s in the vowel contexts /i_ɪ/u_ə/, and /o_ə/: (1) The control set had /l/s that were either necessarily syllable initial or syllable final; and (2) the test set had morpheme final /l/s with a vowel initial morpheme following and boundaries of varying strengths [+, ♯, ♯♯ (compound boundary), major phrase boundary, major intonational boundary] intervening. The data were analyzed by two techniques, namely traditional spectrograms, and by measuring the frequencies of the LPC‐poles for the /l/s. It was found, for at least some speakers, that light /l/s are possible before all boundaries except a major intonational boundary. These results support the position that resyllabification is generally allowed across any boundary except a major intonational one. We have no data confirming the claim of Halle and Mohanan [“Segmental phonology of Modern English,” Linguistic Inquiry 16, 57–116 (1985)] that speakers resyllabify across compound boundaries but fail to do so across word or phrase boundaries.