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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Linguistics

Faculty Publications

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Syllabification

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

An Experimental Approach To Ambisyllabicity In English, David Eddington, Dirk Elzinga Jan 2014

An Experimental Approach To Ambisyllabicity In English, David Eddington, Dirk Elzinga

Faculty Publications

The factors that influence English speakers to classify a consonant as ambisyllabic are explored in 581 bisyllabic words. The /b/ in habit, for example, was considered ambisyllabic when a participant chose hab as the first part of the word and bit as the second. Geminate spelling was found to interact with social variables; older participants and more educated speakers provided more ambisyllabic responses. The influence of word-level phonotactics on syllabification was also evident. A consonant such as the medial /d/ in standard is attested as the second consonant in the coda of many English words (e.g. lard), as well as …


Exploring The Explanatory Power Of Semitic And Egyptian In Uto-Aztecan, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington Jan 2014

Exploring The Explanatory Power Of Semitic And Egyptian In Uto-Aztecan, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

The factors that influence English speakers to classify a consonant as ambisyllabic are explored in 581 bisyllabic words. The /b/ in habit, for example, was considered ambisyllabic when a participant chose hab as the first part of the word and bit as the second. Geminate spelling was found to interact with social variables; older participants and more educated speakers provided more ambisyllabic responses. The influence of word-level phonotactics on syllabification was also evident. A consonant such as the medial /d/ in standard is attested as the second consonant in the coda of many English words (e.g. lard), as well …


Syllabification Of American English: Evidence From A Large-Scale Experiment. Part I, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington, Rebecca Treiman Jan 2013

Syllabification Of American English: Evidence From A Large-Scale Experiment. Part I, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington, Rebecca Treiman

Faculty Publications

4990 bi-syllabic English words were syllabified by about 22 native speakers who choose between different slash divisions (e.g. photon: FOW/TAHN, FOWT/AHN). Results of the regression analyses of the items with one medial consonant are discussed. Consistent with previous studies, consonants were drawn to stressed syllables, and more sonorant consonants were more often placed in the coda. A model in which syllables are made to be as word-like as possible is supported; syllables were often created that begin and end in the same phonemes that are legal word-initially and finally, and syllabifications tended to follow morpho-logical boundaries. Orthographic conventions, such as …


The Phonetic Context Of American English Flapping: Quantitative Evidence, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington Jan 2008

The Phonetic Context Of American English Flapping: Quantitative Evidence, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

The phonetic context in which word-medial flaps occur (in contrast to [th]) in American English is explored. The analysis focuses on stress placement, following phone, and syllabification. In Experiment 1, subjects provided their preference for [th] or [ɾ] in bisyllabic nonce words. Consistent with previous studies, flaps were preferred before stressless syllables and [th] before stressed syllables, but the following phone also exerted a small degree of influence. Experiments 2 and 3 tested whether [th] or [ɾ] are associated with a particular syllable position in bisyllabic words. They demonstrate that [th] is favored in onsets, while [ɾ] is not consistently …