earticle

영어

The syllabification of an intervocalic consonant in a trochaic sequence in American English (AE) is problematic. For example, speakers disagree on the syllabification of /t/ in metal. This study proposes that AE has blurred syllabification within the trochaic foot and that this is connected to the importance of foot structure in AE phonology. Phonetic work on AE indicates that foot-initial phonemes are enhanced or demarcated (e.g. by aspiration and other means) making clear the syllable boundary at the beginning of the foot. Blurred syllabification helps enhance foot-initial demarcation by making foot-internal syllable boundaries less distinct. Evidence for blurred syllabification comes from schwa syncope (Zwicky 1972; Hooper 1978; Kenstowicz 1994). Consider the words like (a) chocolate and opera, where schwa syncope (SS) is likely versus (b) pelican and felony, where it is unlikely. The oddity of English SS is that it is preferred in (a) when the resulting consonant cluster after SS has a syllabification that is uncertain (i.e. blurred), but is avoided in (b) when the syllabification between the two consonants would be very distinct. Under a new conception of English SS developed in this paper, SS is viewed as a problem of foot structure reduction: SS reduces a dactylic foot into a preferred trochaic foot. The pattern of SS can best be understood if AE actually prefers nondistinct (or blurred) syllabification within a trochaic foot. This functionally helps to enhance the foot-initial boundary.