Syllabification of intervocalic consonants

Two tasks were used to study the syllabification of intervocalic consonants like the /l/'s of melon and collide. In an oral task, subjects reversed the syllables in words; in a written task, they selected between alternative syllabifications. Even in the oral task, subjects' responses were influenced by whether their spellings of the words contained a single letter (l) or a double letter (ll). Responses in the two tasks were also affected by the stress pattern of the word, the phonetic category of the intervocalic consonant, and the nature of the preceding vowel. The results are discussed in relation to theories of syllabification.