The syllabification of /s/ clusters in English

Abstract

Three experiments were carried out to determine how speakers of English syllabify bisyllabic nonwords with second-syllable stress and three different types of medial clusters: /s/ + stop (Type 1), /s/ + sonorant (Type 2) and obstruent + sonorant (Type 3). Because all these clusters occur at the beginnings of English words, they are usually thought to be legal onsets. According to the maximum onset principle, therefore, all three types of stimuli should be syllabified before the consonant cluster. Type 3 stimuli were typically syllabified in this manner, but Type 1 and Type 2 stimuli were not. Instead, /s/ was often placed in the first syllable. These results may mean that / s / clusters are not legal English onsets. It is widely acknowledged that the set of possible English codas is smaller than the set of word-final consonant clusters. For example, the final /ksθs/ of sixths does not occur at the ends of syllables within a morpheme. The present findings suggest that, similarly, the set of possible English onsets is smaller than the set of word-initial consonant clusters.