Consonant release and the syllable

Abstract

Syllable-boundary phenomena, particularly the "{C, #}" rule environment, are the most frequently mentioned evidence for the phonological role of the syllable. Consonant release provides an effective characterization of the syllable boundary and an increase in explanatory power over the unrefined notion "syllable (boundary)/' Although it remains in need of full articulatory rather than acoustic definition, consonant release yields phonetic burst, a perturbedpostconsonantal air stream that clarifies voicing and place of articulation contrasts. Nonrelease naturally leads to neutralization and/or "weakening." Thus for example Quebec French stop nasalization is of unreleased rather than syllable-final stops, and German devoicing is of unreleased rather than syllable-final obstruents. Consonant release is a necessary feature of complete allophonic phonetic specification of languages and is perhaps contrastive in some. Other aspects of syllable phonology are better understood in terms of consonant release, such as the maximal onset principle, which maximizes released, acoustically marked consonants, and the sonority cycle, which perhaps reflects degrees of releasability based upon degrees of openness.Many phonological phenomena that appear to rely on recognition of the syllable may be better understood to rely on the phonetically grounded phonological feature of consonant release. Section 1 of this paper presents some phonological rules that have often been considered to offer the best evidence for the syllable. Section 2 discusses the phonetic phenomenon of consonant release, and section 3 presents some roles for the feature of nonrelease in phonology, arguing that the feature is more explanatory than the notion "syllable" in these roles. Section 4 shows how, in the rules presented in section 1, reference to the syllable may be replaced by reference to the feature termed [unreleased] ([unr]). Finally, section 5 briefly discusses what understanding of the syllable results with the replacement of the syllable boundary by values of the feature [unr].

Consonant-Final Loanwords and Epenthetic Vowels in Italian

“…I follow Hudson (2001) who, arguing against a syllable-based analysis of Amharic epenthesis, proposes a «release» account of epenthesis: «epenthesis may be understood as making consonant release possible in the absence of a following vowel» (Hudson 2001: 70; see also Hudson 1995). The vocalic element following consonant-final loans in Italian is actually the result of the release of the consonant.…”

Syllabic and moraic structures in Piro

“…Third, Hudson (1995) suggests that syllable-final consonants should be marked as unreleased, and the Maximal Onset Principle (Selkirk 1982) follows from the maximisation of consonant releases. Although phonetically not all coda consonants are universally unreleased, there is indeed a cross-linguistic tendency for a coda consonant to be unreleased or weakened, but the putative coda consonants have strong releases.…”