We asked whether invariant phonetic indices for syllable structure can be identified in a language where word-initial consonant clusters, regardless of their sonority profile, are claimed to be parsed heterosyllabically. Four speakers of Moroccan Arabic were recorded, using Electromagnetic Articulography. Pursuing previous work, we employed temporal diagnostics for syllable structure, consisting of static correspondences between any given phonological organisation and its presumed phonetic indices. We show that such correspondences offer only a partial understanding of the relation between syllabic organisation and continuous * We would like to thank the editors, the associate editor and four anonymous reviewers for comments that greatly improved the paper. 455 indices of that organisation. We analyse the failure of the diagnostics and put forth a new approach in which different phonological organisations prescribe different ways in which phonetic indices change as phonetic parameters are scaled. The main finding is that invariance is found in these patterns of change, rather than in static correspondences between phonological constructs and fixed values for their phonetic indices.

Competing proposals on the syllabification of initial consonants in Moroccan Arabic are evaluated using a combination of experimental and modelling techniques. The proposed model interprets an input syllable structure as a set of articulatory landmarks coordinated in time. This enables the simulation of temporal patterns associated with the input syllable structure under different noise conditions. Patterns of stability between landmarks simulated by the model are matched to patterns in data collected with Electromagnetic Articulometry experiments. The results implicate a heterosyllabic parse of initial clusters so that strings like /sbu/ comprise two syllables, [s.bu]. Beyond this specific result for Moroccan Arabic, the model reveals the range of validity of certain stability-based indexes of syllable structure and generates predictions that allow evaluation of a syllabic parse even when stability-based heuristics break down. Overall, the paper provides support for the broad hypothesis that syllable structure is reflected in patterns of temporal stability and contributes analytical tools to evaluate competing theories on the basis of these patterns. * We would like to thank the editors of the special issue, Andries Coetzee, René Kager and Joe Pater, as well as Dani Byrd and one anonymous reviewer for comments that greatly improved the paper. Thanks are also due to the NYU ph-lab group, especially Tuuli Adams, Adam Buchwald, Lisa Davidson, Maria Gouskova and Kevin Roon for comments on this work at various stages of development. Parts of the data were first presented at the CUNY conference on the syllable. We'd like to thank participants at that conference for their feedback, particularly François Dell, Paul Kiparsky, Patricia Shaw and Donca Steriade. Remaining errors are solely the responsibility of the authors.

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