Syllabification in Speech Production: Evaluation of WEAVER

Models of speech production differ in their claims about syllabification. In a memory-based approach such as that advanced by Dell (1986, 1988), the syllable structure of each word is stored in the mental lexicon. In contrast, according to a rule-based approach, planning of speech involves the assignment of syllable positions to segments after they have been retrieved for a word from memory (e.g. Levelt, 1992). Here, a case is made for the rule-based approach of the WEAVER model of speech production (Roelofs, 1994, in press a). First, I argue that cross-morpheme and cross-word syllabification point to the need to deal with flexibility of syllable membership and therefore pose difficulty to a memory-based approach but not to WEAVER. Secondly, I review empirical support for the specific form of syllabification realised in WEAVER. Thirdly, I report a new experiment on syllabification, which supports WEAVER rather than Dell's model. Finally, the issue of resyllabification is discussed.

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