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.
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