Conclusions and theoretical considerations

The above discussion aims to show how classical descriptions of English syncope diverge from the data gained from larger-scale corpus studies, and how this discrepancy may be accounted for. The argumentation draws on Carlotti et al. (2009)’s emphasis on surface opacity and the role of the licit/illicit phonotactic distinction in syncope. The claim is made that both traditionally distinguished types of syncope are usually opaque, carrying traces of underlying non-adjacency. However, when the cluster effect and the stress factor permit, full phonologization may take place, paving the way to lexicalization. Due to the higher stringency of phonotactic constraints word-initially and before stressed vowels however, it is much more “difficult” for an emerging consonant sequence to be licit at the left edge and/or in pre-tonic position. This explains the ensuing difference in potential lexicalization between the two traditional subtypes, pre-stress and post-stress syncope, and it is this difference which is

28 In addition, as it has been pointed out to me, most of these potential examples are morphologically complex words, which may also hamper syncope.

29 On John C. Wells as a native speaker “without any well-defined theory about the conditions of syncope”

(although in a different context), see Szigetvári (2007: 415 fn.10).

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part of native speaker knowledge and as such has served as the basis for that traditional typology. So the question is, to what extent are those traditional descriptions factual or fictitious? And the answer is, they are neither factual, nor fictitious: although they go against phonetic facts and corpus data, they reflect genuine intuitions about surface opacity vs.

potential lexicalization.

The major consequence of this view for the phonological analysis of syncope in English is that neither the cluster effect nor the stress effect need to be encoded in the structural description of syncope itself. The influence of stress position is a side-effect of independently motivated, more general principles (no reduction to the left of stressed vowels;

no stress clash). Similarly, no reference is needed in syncope proper to inter-consonantal interaction, in the form of a sonority condition for example, since that is independently available in phonotactic generalizations, which are weakly present in synchronic on-line syncope but strictly govern its diachronic manifestation in lexicalization (cf. pram and s’ppose vs. tattie, vs. Barbra and Britney). Therefore, pre- and post-stress syncope can both be modelled with the same simple mechanism. What exactly that is hinges on one’s theoretical taste, but it should encode two factors: (i) the presence of a following vowel (to explain why there is no word-final syncope), and (ii) the way consonant clusters preceding or following the deletion site affect the process (a point not discussed in this paper).

One crucial observation emphasized in the present paper, phonetic graduality resulting in surface opacity, seems to support what Harris (2011) terms the stable nucleus solution (e.g., Harris 1994 for English). As Harris (2011) argues, an analysis resorting to a stable nuclear position in prosodic structure, in which no deletion proper takes place but the phonetic interpretation of the nucleus varies along a continuous/gradient scale, makes the right predictions concerning both the categorical nature of the process and the surface non-adjacency of the flanking consonants. In light of the foregoing discussion, then, such a model, accompanied by adequate sub-theories of lexical phonotactic constraints, stress, and lexicalization, may be able to account for all the observed properties of syncope in English.

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Katalin Balogné Bérces

Institute of English and American Studies, PPCU bbkati@yahoo.com

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