ABSTRACT
Syllable-based analyses assume that prosodic structure is part of the implicit phonological knowledge of native speakers. While linguists and native speakers generally agree on the number of syllables in a word, there is less agreement on the syllabification of consonant clusters (for Italian see Bertinetto et al., 1992, Bertinetto, 1998, 1999). The present chapter, after first reviewing formal linguistic analyses and empirical evidence for consonant cluster syllabification, reports on two consonant cluster division experiments; an oral pause-break experiment (adapted from Derwing, 1992), and a written syllable division experiment. The goal of these experiments was to obtain data on native speaker intuition of consonant cluster syllabification and to test the predictions of syllable-based analyses.
