Syllabification in English words with medial sp, st, sk

Abstract

An investigation of syllabification in English words with medial sp, st, sk followed by a stressed vowel ( despise, frustration etc.) is carried out; aspiration of the stop consonant is interpreted as syllable separation between the stop and the sibilant, lack of aspiration as separation before the sibilant. Words of this type were recorded by native speakers of British or American English together with words with initial and post-initial stops serving as a frame of reference (pin, spin etc.). Measurements of release stage duration reveal that the medial stops are normally unaspirated. Only in words containing a prefix with - s followed by an intuitively transparent morpheme boundary, e.g. miscalculate, discourteous , are the stops aspirated. Syllable division before the scan be predicted in a large majority of cases. Other findings are that the cluster skl is tolerated initially in a syllable, that disperse cannot be told apart from disburse , and that a unitary interpretation of sp, st, sk is in some respects expedient. The English pronouncing dictionaries are not on the whole reliable guides to syllabification in the words under investigation.