The Syllable in Dutch

Schwa, Syllables, and Extrametricality in Dutch

“…No doubt the fact that the leftmost position of the rime is always occupied by a vowel follows from universal considerations, while the rightmost position appears simply to be free: it may be a vowel as second half of a long vowel, it may be the second half of a diphthong (which pattern with long vowels in Dutch; see Zonneveld and Trommelen 1980), and it may be a sonorant or an obstruent consonant, as in (8) and (9). Especially with regard to the latter we differ from Trommelen (1983), who has an XX-rime if a sonorant occupies second position, but allows XXX if there is an obstruent in third position (pamflet, plank-ton). Below we will review the evidence which led her to this proposal, indicating that there is no reason to differentiate between sonorants and obstruents in this respect, and concluding that the facts support our bipositional rime.…”

“…He then goes on to develop an account which not only leaves the subset undefined, but also suffers from the disadvantages noted above. More promising seems to us the position taken in Trommelen (1983) for Dutch, who assumes that the syllabification of all derived structure is governed by the universal principles accounting for the data in (3). This means that the interesting language-particular action takes place in underived structure (see also Hyman 1985:2), where we will have to account for two types of data, typically relating to syllable breaks in consonant clusters, and the quantitative contents of syllables.…”

“…Although our main concern in this paper will not be with the onset of Dutch syllables, we note that we adopt here the relatively constrained view of it proposed in Trommelen (1983), who allows only [C(L)], where L is a liquid (subject to further filters). Data such as those in (8) This analysis accounts straightforwardly for the facts under (4), with the understanding that the analysis interacts with the notion of extrasyllabicity mentioned in the introduction.…”

“…At least three phonological rules are the source of surface exceptions to the bipositional rime restriction. Examples like pi(:)stool 'pistol' in (21a) led Trommelen (1983) to allow a tripositional rime for obstruents in third position. As far as we can see, however, these data result from the interference of a phonological rule (unknown to us from the literature) that lengthens (unstressed) i before a dental cluster.…”

“…The way out here is as follows. Trommelen (1983) proposes the filter in (22) to account for the absence of sr-, zr-, and ir-(vs. tr-and dr-in onset position either word-internally or word-initially:…”