The Even Yearbook 5 (2002)

volume: 5 (2002)
pages: 139–149
author: Péter Szigetvári
title: Syncope in English
abstract: English abounds in lexical consonant clusters; their nature and constraints on their occurrence are treated extensively in the phonological literature. There is, however, also a possibility for creating morpheme-internal consonant clusters postlexically, by syncope (also referred to as schwa-deletion, sonorant desyllabification or compression). In English, synchronic/​dynamic syncope is always preceded – historically/derivationally – by SCF, for any C₁əC₂ ~ C₁C₂ alternation there exists an intermediate stage where C2 is syllabic; the reverse does not hold. This fact points to a strong connection between SCF and syncope. High vowel gliding is also mentioned, since it seems to be a special case of syncope. The paper looks at data presented in the LPD (Wells 1990). The aim is not to provide a theory to account for the data, rather to systematize the data to a certain extent in order to ease the task of further researchers.
PDF:   full text
raw text: 02sz-raw
refs: ⟨BibTeX⟩
@article{even02sz,
  author  = {Péter Szigetvári},
  title   = {Syncope in {E}nglish},
  year    = 2002,
  journal = {The Even Yearbook},
  volume  = 5,
  pages   = {139–149},
  url     = {http://seas.elte.hu/w/!even/02sz}
}
⟨RIS⟩
TY  - JOUR
AU  - Szigetvári,Péter
PY  - 2002/​/​/
TI  - Syncope in English
T2  - The Even Yearbook
VL  - 5
SP  - 139
EP  - 149
UR  - http://seas.elte.hu/w/!even/02sz
ER  -
⟨txt⟩
Szigetvári, Péter. 2002. Syncope in English. The Even Yearbook 5: 139–149. http://seas.elte.hu/w/!even/02sz