The Structure of English Syllables and Polysyllables

A series of experiments was carried out to explore the structure of monosyllabic, disyllabic. and trisyllabic words and nonwords. In most of the experiments, we used a phoneme shift task with visually presented stimuli to compare the speed with which hypothetical constituents could be extracted from one item and substituted into another. When constituents of the syllable and of the stimulus as a whole were confounded in monosyllables, evidence of an onset/rime or onset/remainder structure was obtained. In addition, initial clusters beginning with /s/ were less cohesive than other initial clusters. When constituents of the syllable and of the entire stimulus were unconfounded in disyllables, no influence of syllable structure was evident. Finally, when edge effects were eliminated by focusing on the middle syllables of trisyllables, effects of syllable structure emerged. These syllable-structure effects appeared with the phoneme shift task and with an unspeeded task involving auditory stimulus presentation. The results suggest that both word structure and syllable structure characterize spoken words.