A corpus-based investigation of syllable variation in English dictionaries

Résumé En

This talk will investigate the locus of variation in syllable boundaries in Longman Pronunciation Dictionary and the CELEX database to offer contemporary views for the variation of syllable boundaries indicated in pronouncing dictionaries. The variation of accepted clusters in word-internal boundaries will be compared with the frequency of licit clusters in on sets and codas for monosyllables (the legality principle, Goslin, J., & Frauenfelder 2001, Eddington et al. 2013). Synchronically, the consonant clusters that can be found as onsets or codas have been perused using R to determine profiles of preference for syllabification. A systematic investigation of the CELEX database (Baayen et al. 1995) has yielded the most frequent onset and coda clusters for each syllable position and test the effects of primary, secondary and absence of stress for these clusters. Radar charts of the different consonant clusters have been produced for each syllable position and allow the ranking of consonants and clusters according to their frequency, in each syllable, according to stress and position (ult, penult, antepenult). This systematic plotting of clusters allows the investigation of frequency effects.