The Comparison of Bisegmental Representations of sC Clusters in English

• Authors: Stangel Karolina
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The distribution of sC clusters and their interactions with phonological rules point to a unique status of such consonant sequences, which opens the possibility of ascribing more than one representation to them. The primary goal of this article is to establish the most suitable representation of sC clusters, understood in the narrow sense as /s/ plus a stop cluster: /sk/, /st/ and /sp/ only, from among the theoretically possible variants generated by the autosegmental theory of the syllable. The differing representations display various compliance with phonotactic generalisations and phonological behaviour of the clusters in question in English. The article is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces background information. Section 2 examines the logically possible two-segment structures as ensuing from the application of the Syllable Structure Algorithm. Section 3 presents the Branching Onset model and its variants. Section 4 considers the specific predictions made by the Appendix model. Section 5 offers conclusions and points to the most appropriate bisegmental representation.

Keywords

EN

sC-clusters; representation; autosegmental theory; Syllable Structure Algorithm; Branching Onset model

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 22/2
• Pages: 27-40

Contributors

author

Stangel Karolina

• University of Warsaw

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