Experimental evidence on the syllabification of two-consonant clusters in Czech

This study examines syllabification preferences of 30 speakers of Czech in two behavioural experiments using real disyllabic words with 61 intervocalic CC clusters as stimuli. The aim was to evaluate competing theoretical predictions about syllable boundaries in Czech. Participants synchronized individual syllables with metronome pulses in Experiment 1 (induced pause insertion) and produced syllables in reversed order in Experiment 2 (syllable reversal). Logistic regression analyses revealed significant effects of cluster sonority type, phonological length of the preceding vowel and word-edge phonotactics (also in relation to frequency of occurrence). Morphological structure of the items significantly influenced syllable boundary placement as well. The results of both experiments converge towards the effects found in previous studies on English and some other languages. However, ambisyllabic responses were virtually non-existent in pause insertion and relatively low (8%) in syllable reversal, which differs from the results on Germanic languages. Finally, the findings do not support strict onset maximization but rather indicate an onset-filling strategy.