🚀 go-pugleaf

JAREA@UKCC.UKY.EDU writes:
>mcovingt@aisun3.ai.uga.edu (Michael Covington) writes:
>>
>>A syllable is a sonority peak.  That is, it is a local maximum of sonority.
>>The middle of a syllable is surrounded by less sonorous sounds on both sides.
>>Sonority is defined by the Aissen/Hankamer sonority hierarchy [...]
> 
>/k/ and /t/ are stops
>
>/s/ is a voiceless continuant, which has higher sonority than stops
> 
>the word 'extra' /Ekstra/ thus consists of three syllables, having as
>sonority peaks /E/, /s/ and /a/ (or schwa for the last [...]

"Extra" clearly has two syllables, so there must be a missing piece of 
information.  Well, he forgot to mention one thing:

/s/ is weird.

This is one of those facts about syllabification in English and many other 
languages; /s/ can do many things that are not permitted to any other 
consonants.  It violates the sonority hierarchy all the time, in words like
"extra" and "straw" (three sonority peaks, but clearly only two syllables)...

/s/ is the only segment that can form these kinds of triconsontantal onsets
in English; i.e., /skr/, but not /*fkr/ or /*shkr/.  So your three syllable
analysis of "extra" would be right, except that, 1) /s/ can't head a syllable
in English, and 2) the /s/ gets syllabified into the second syllable, 'cause 
it can.

Thus not:  e.ks.tra  (which, incidentally, would be its syllbification in   
                      Berber)

but        ek.stra, since "str" is a permissible onset cluster in English.

Hope this clears it up!

--Zvi
Phonologist-in-Training at UMass, Amherst