On Syllabic Consonants and the Inconsistent Number of Syllables in Present-Day English The Mechanisms and Motivations.doc

38on syllabic consonants and the inconsistent number of syllables in present-day english: the mechanisms and motivationstoshihiro odafukuoka universityabstract some words in present-day english (e.g. cuddly, bottling) that include the environment of syllabic consonants have a fluctuation of either trisyllabic or disyllabic. this paper, pursuing the mechanisms of this issue, presents seven motivations regarding the inconsistency: (a) the recognition of two derivational suffixes, (b) the sound patterns related to the derivational suffixes, (c) the application of the onset vs. the retention of sonorant syllabification, (d) the absence of minimal pairs, (e) the existence of two types of pronunciations in similar words, (f) the variations of the british /l/ sound, and (g) the pronunciations in relation to derivational suffixes. it is further demonstrated that (a) and (c) have the priority among them, that (d) is rather important and that the others do not play a significant role. 1. introduction whereas the nuclei of a syllable are usually vowels, consonants, in particular liquids and nasals, occasionally occupy syllabic nuclei. the latter are called syllabic consonants. much research has been made on syllabic consonants in present-day english (henceforth pde). see previous studies such as jones (1956, 1960, 1976), gimson (1980), wells (1965, 1982, 1995), roach (2000), ladefoged (2006) and others. however, there is an unsolved issue on syllabic consonants. the issue is that native speakers of pde disagree on the number of syllables, many of the examples being related to syllabic consonants. while some linguists have pointed out this issue, roach (2002: 76) observes that more research is needed in this area for english. therefore, the present paper attempts to consider this case. the aim of this paper is to make clear the mechanisms of the issue and to pursue several reasons for the occurrences of such disagreement. it is also shown that some reasons are more important, while others are less important. let us first introduce basic points relevant to this paper. the number of syllables in english is relatively straightforward. from the point of view of simple generalization, it is the number of vowels. the following are the illustrations on the number of syllables in pde: (1) a. monosyllabic words: get, house, bus, makeb. disyllabic words: easy, define, moment, windowc. trisyllabic words: justify, employee, estimate, opiniond. four-syllabic words: presentation, environment, peninsulae. five-syllabic words: analytical, vocabulary, electricityin english the number of syllables is only in general that of vowels, since there exist syllabic consonants, which are regarded as one of the two criteria on the count of syllables. syllabic consonants are possibly pronounced in the fourth syllable of the word presentation in (1d) and in the fifth syllable of the word analytical in (1e). when syllabic consonants are articulated, the syllables do not have a vowel. vowels definitely form the nuclei of a syllable. syllabic consonants in pde are further exemplified below:2 (2) a. middle b. seven c. final midl sevn fainlthe words in (2) are disyllabic. the first syllables are stressed and the second syllables are unstressed and have syllabic consonants. the vertical diacritics below the consonants indicate that the consonants are syllabic. the occurrence of the syllabic consonants is mainly restricted within unstressed syllables except for the one such as mmm mmm, which is the syllabic consonant in a stressed syllable. the pronunciation of many syllabic consonants is a phonetic variant and not included in the smallest inventory of segments, i.e., phonemes. as described in gimson (1980: 58) and wells (1995: 402-3), two phonetic forms are possible in the environment of syllabic consonants in pde (i.e. schwa plus a nonsyllabic consonant and a syllabic consonant) and the underlying form of them consists of schwa plus a nonsyllabic consonant:3 (3) a. candle b. often c. fishery /l/ l, l /n/ n, n /r/ r, rirrespective of the two phonetic variants, there would be an agreement that candle and often are disyllabic and that fishery is trisyllabic. however, as to certain words that in the correct form include the environment of syllabic consonants native speakers of english disagree on the number of syllables. those words are cuddly, cycling, bottling, settling, wrestling, rattling, settler and threatening (cf. wells 1965: 110, 1995: 402, kahn 1980: 35, borowsky 1989: 149, giegerich 1992: 131, jensen 2000: 197 and roach 2002: 76). the current paper presents, in total, seven reasons for this disagreement. more specifically, the following account for the issue of the disagreement: (a) the recognition of two derivational suffixes, (b) the sound patterns related to the derivational suffixes, (c) the application of the onset vs. the retention of sonorant syllabification, (d) the absence of minimal pairs, (e) the existence of two types of pronunciations in similar words, (f) the variations of the british /l/ sound, and (g) the pronunciations in relation to derivational suffixes. this paper also claims that among the seven reasons (a) and (c) are crucially important, that (d) is rather important and that the others do not have the priority. this paper is organized as follows. section 2 elucidates the descriptions by the seven pieces of previous research. section 3 accounts for the issue of the disagreement in terms of derivational suffixes and sound patterns and section 4 in terms of either the universality of the onset or the sonorant syllabification as in pde and section 5 in terms of minimal pairs. section 6 further claims why the disagreement happens when the /l/ sound is included. section 7 argues the priority among the seven motivations. section 8 concludes this paper. 2. the previous research in order to understand the issue, it is necessary to review the seven pieces of previous research. the following is the description made by roach (2002: 76): (4) “the matter of syllabic consonants is more confusing because of the fact that speakers do not agree in their intuitions about whether a consonant (particularly /l/) is syllabic or not: while the most would agree that, for example, cuddle and cycle are disyllabic (i.e. contain two syllables), cuddly and cycling are disyllabic for some people (and therefore do not contain a syllabic consonant) while for others they are trisyllabic.”roachs (2002: 76) observation implies that when cuddly and cycling are disyllabic, the phonetic forms contain nonsyllabic l and that when these words are trisyllabic, they include the environment of syllabic consonants (i.e. either l or l). the pronunciations and the numbers of syllables are demonstrated in (5) and (6) (where syl. is the abbreviation for syllables):4 (5) cuddly a. kdli b. kdli c. kdli 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. (6) cycling a. saiklin b. saiklin c. saiklin 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. the differences on the number of syllables are the ones on whether or not the pronunciation of the syllabic consonants is possible. as has already been demonstrated, the pronunciations l and l are the variants of the single form /l/ and tend to be alternatively pronounced or fluctuate among accents of english. significantly, roach (2002: 76) describes that this issue must be further pursued. his statement can be repeated in this regard: more research is needed in this area for english. (emphasis mine) similar observations to roach (2002) can be found in other pieces of previous research. that is to say, intuitions differ regarding the number of syllables, most of the examples being related to syllabic consonants. whether the pronunciation of syllabic consonants is possible or not affects the difference on the number of syllables. the same word as that of roach (2002) is exemplified in borowsky (1989: 149): the alternate pronunciation cyclin of cycling is a casual speech variant. in this case, again, the divergence between the nonsyllabic l and the syllabic l leads to the difference on whether the word is disyllabic or trisyllabic. as the word variant implies, both of the pronunciations are possible. the former is, however, the case of casual pronunciation, not of formal pronunciation. thus, the formal one is that with the syllabic consonant (or the one including schwa) and the one with the nonsyllabic l is articulated as the casual one. giegerichs (1992) view is similar to those of roach and borowsky. on the one hand, giegerich (1992: 131) admits the general consistency on the number of syllables in english: speakers will normally have little difficulty in deciding how many syllables a given word of their language contains. on the other hand, he illustrates the following difference on the number of syllables (giegerich 1992: 131): (7) “there are a few english words that may have variable pronunciations with different numbers of syllables bottling may be pronounced with two or three syllables, realistic with three or four etc. and in some such cases the difference in the number of syllables may be a matter of what the listener perceives rather than one of the actual pronunciation. on the whole, it would seem that such problematic cases constitute a small minority only.”5 the pronunciations and the numbers of syllables in the word bottling are presented below: (8) bottling a. btlin b. btlin c. btlin 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. in the course of discussion this paper touches on the difference on the number of syllables in the word realistic. in parallel, jensen (2000: 197, fn. 11) implies the same phenomenon: settling can of course also be pronounced with a (clear) nonsyllabic /l/. in the word, correct pronunciation is the one with syllabic l or the one with schwa plus nonsyllabic l. it is assumed from jensens (2000: 197, fn. 11) description that since both the nonsyllabic l and the syllabic l are possible pronunciations, the word consists of either disyllables or trisyllables: (9) settling a. setlin b. setlin c. setlin 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. kahn (1980: 35) poses a similar example where the number of syllables differs in connection with a syllabic consonant: there are two easily distinguished pronunciations of wrestling, one with two syllables, the other, perhaps less common, with three, .6 this implies the following difference among native speakers of english, which is equal to other examples: (10) wrestling a. reslin b. reslin c. reslin 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. wells (1995: 402) has a parallel observation to this issue, which is cited in the following: (11) “many words such as rattling, formed with ing attached to a stem which in isolation ends in a syllabic consonant, are pronounced indifferently with syllabic l or with non-syllabic l (so that the two possibilities might be regarded as allophones in free variation).”the term free variation means, for instance, released or unreleased voiceless stops in the coda: (12) a. cat b. pipe c. make t, t| p, p| k, k|these allophones in free variation do not change the meanings of the words, but the pronunciations are subject to change. with regard to the word in question, such differences in the sounds cause the difference on the number of syllables: (13) rattling a. rqtlin b. rqtlin c. rqtlin 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. the words exemplified above are similar in kind. however, in his earlier work wells (1965: 110) illustrates other types of words: settler and threatening. they can be pronounced with syllabic or nonsyllabic l or n indifferently (wells 1965: 110). it is assumed that in parallel to other examples, this leads to the disagreement on the number of syllables. it is transcribed with the numbers of syllables in (14) and (15): (14) settler a. setl b. setl c. setl 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. (15) threatening a. tretnin b. tretnin c. tretnin 2 syl. 3 syl. 3 syl. in sum, the six researchers (roach, borowsky, giegerich, jensen, kahn and wells) have the identical view that in pde the number of syllables differs in relation to certain syllabic consonants. what is more, the majority of the words subsume the /l/ sound word-medially. the mechanisms and motivations of this issue are discussed in the remainder of this article. 3. derivational suffixes and sound patterns in this section a morphophonological consideration is presented. as roach (2002: 76) illustrates, there is the general agreement that the following words are disyllabic: (16) a. cuddle b. cyclein parallel, native speakers of english would agree that the following words that have the environment of syllabic consonants possess two syllables: (17) a. middle b. final c. candle d. seven e. eatenthere is the agreement on the number of syllables, when the environment of syllabic consonants appears word-finally. while there is the fluctuation as the phonetic variants of either a syllabic consonant or schwa plus a nonsyllabic consonant, the environment of syllabic consonants is correctly recognized. the words in (16) and (17) are definitely disyllabic, but neither monosyllabic nor trisyllabic. as the previous research demonstrates, on the other hand, there is the disagreement on the number of syllables in the following words: (18) a. cuddly b. cycling c. bottling d. settling e. wrestling f. rattling g. settler h. threateningmany of the examples shown above include the /l/ sound word-medially. now one of the ideas is derivational suffixes. note that two types of derivational suffixes can be recognized for the words in (18a-f). they are and for the word cuddly and and for the words cycling, bottling, settling, wrestling and rattling. based on the fact that these two derivational suffixes are recognizable, let us make morphological analyses regarding words where syllabic l is possible. in the words bitterly, utterly and pitiless, for example, syllabic l can be implemented: (19) a. bitterly b. utterly c. pitiless bitli tli pitls (wells 1995: 401, 406, 407)whereas these words have the suffixes including the /l/ sound (i.e. and ), only one-way morphological analysis is permitted: (20) a. bitterly: + b. utterly: + c. pitiless: + for instance, the following ones are definitely impossible:(21) a. bitterly: * + b. utterly: * + c. pitiless: * + it is not assumed in any way that the trisyllabic words such as bitterly, utterly and pitiless become disyllabic due to the morphological analyses in (21) that the stems and the suffixes are each monosyllabic. even if the incorrect suffixes in (21) are recognized, the stems therein exhibit totally impossible ones since the sonority promotion in the coda including a sonorant consonant like the /tl/ in those examples is disallowed in pde. with respect to many of the words in question shown in section 2 and (18), however, two-way analyses can be allowed. in the following the lefthand ones represent the correct analyses and the righthand ones exhibit the incorrect analyses respectively: (22) a. cuddly: + * + b. cycling: + * + c. bottling: + * + d. settling: + * + e. wrestling: + * + f. rattling: + * + word formation rules permit the two derivational suffixes, irrespective of whether they are correct or incorrect. while derivational suffixes play a certain role in word formation, the recognition of the two types of derivational suffixes leads to the two types of morphological patterns. as a result of the two-way morphological analyses, the number of syllables varies. the ones in (23) are given owing to the correct analyses: (23) a. cuddly: + 2 syl. + 1 syl. = 3 syl. b. cycling: + 2 syl. + 1 syl. = 3 syl. c. bottling: + 2 syl. + 1 syl. = 3 syl. d. settling: + 2 syl. + 1 syl. = 3 syl. e. wrestling: + 2 syl. + 1 syl. = 3 syl. f. rattling: + 2 syl. + 1 syl. = 3 syl. in (23) the stems have two syllables and the suffixes one syllable. all of them are trisyllabic in total. in these cases the environment of syllabic consonants is correctly recognized, when we ass