B. Kessler et R. Treiman, SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF PHONEMES IN ENGLISH SYLLABLES, Journal of memory and language, 37(3), 1997, pp. 295-311
In describing the phonotactics (patterning of phonemes) of English syl
lables, linguists have focused on absolute restrictions concerning whi
ch phonemes may occupy which slots of the syllable. To determine wheth
er probabilistic patterns also exist, we analyzed the distributions of
phonemes in a reasonably comprehensive list of uninflected English CV
C (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, some 2001 words in all. The resul
ts showed that there is a significant connection between the vowel and
the following consonant (coda), with certain vowel-coda combinations
being more frequent than expected by chance. In contrast, we did not f
ind significant associations between the initial consonant (onset) and
the vowel. These findings support the idea that English CVC syllables
are composed of an onset and a vowel-coda rime. Implications for lexi
cal processing are discussed. (C) 1997 Academic Press.