Against ambisyllabicity

Abstract

Many phonological phenomena require reference to information beyond the immediate context of segments and boundaries. Most commonly, the syllable has been employed as an additional phonological context, but determining the exact nature of syllables and their boundaries has proved notoriously difficult. One approach is to add resyllabification (Selkirk 1982, Borowsky 1986) or ambisyllabification (Kahn 1976, Gussenhoven 1986, Rubach 1996) to basic syllabification in an attempt to account for phenomena where syllabification alone is inadequate. In this paper we argue against this approach and argue for a second approach, the PROSODIC approach. The essence of the prosodic approach is that there is a HIERARCHY of prosodic categories, of which the syllable is one, any one of which can serve as the context for phonological rules. Essentially, the argument is that prosodic categories, independently required for a wide variety of phonological processes, are sufficient for accounting for all the phenomena that resyllabification or ambisyllabification have been used for, whereas the reverse is not true. Resyllabification and ambisyllabification are invoked ad hoc for certain phenomena and cannot account adequately for the full range of processes that can be understood in terms of prosodic categories. Resyllabification and ambisyllabification are therefore superfluous and can be dispensed with, indeed must be dispensed with, in an explanatory theory of phonology.