Word Games and Syllable Structure

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Abstract
The internal structure of the syllable has been a matter of long-standing debate. Some theories propose a highly articulated tree structure whose topmost constituents are the onset and the rhyme. However, much recent work in phonological theory has adopted a flatter model in which neither the onset nor the rhyme constitutes a constituent. Experiments using the novel word game paradigm developed in Treiman (1983) have been interpreted as supporting the onset-rhyme model. Here we present new results using this paradigm. Subjects learned to insert infixes into simple monosyllabic words, and then extended the infixation to more complex forms including longer words with variable stress placement. The results are interpreted in the light of findings about morphophonemic processes occurring in natural language. Our model draws on the concept of template mapping, adapted from the literature on prosodic morphology. The patterns observed in the data are better modeled by mapping onto output templates than by any derivational rule referring to onset-rhyme constituency. Though the output templates do include prosodic detail, the level of detail available in flat models of the syllable is sufficient to explain the results. A critical appraisal of these results in relation to other results in the literature leads us to reject the onsetrhyme model.