earticle

영어

This paper explores the characteristics of ambisyllabicity in order to investigate a motive for it. After reviewing previous explanatory methods, we suggested a new approach based on prosodic structure, and through the new representation, we can account for the sonorant devoicing and the difference of segment duration in gemination by ambisyllabicity. First, we critically reviewed some approaches depending on an ambisyllabic rule and the syllable weight principle, but those analyses did not provide a satisfactory explanation regarding the reason for the intervocalic consonant to be treated as an ambisyllabic consonant. However, when we adopt the moraic structure, we can show ambisyllabicity well in the correlation between syllable weight and stress. As regards flapping and ambisyllabicity, which are regarded as occurring in the same environment, to the contrary, in this paper, we can recognize that the environments of each of ambisyllabicity and flapping are not always the same. Also, with respect to sonorant devoicing, when the intervocalic consonants are treated as ambisyllabic, we can well account for the reason why the sonorant devoicing occurs. Finally, with respect to gemination, although gemination has the same environments as ambisyllabicity, we can demonstrate that, first, gemination phonologically derived across a word boundary results in ambisyllabicity, and second, geminates are not the same in segment duration depending on the ambisyllabic structures. Thus we can say that geminates do not exhibit the same characteristics as ambisyllabicity, and geminates are longer in segment duration than a singleton.