Syllable parsing in English and French

0. Overview In this paper I argue that Optimality Theory provides for an explanatory model of syllabic parsing in English and French. The argument is based on psycholinguistic facts that have been mysterious up to now. This argument is further buttressed by the computational implementation developed here. This model is important for several reasons. First, it provides a demonstration of how OT can be used in a performance domain.1 Second, it suggests a new relationship between phonological theory and psycholinguistics. The organization of this paper is as follows. First, I review the linguistic evidence for syllable structure in English. Then, experimental evidence is considered. The latter comes from tasks tapping into the units of speech perception by speakers of English and French, and constitutes an argument against the importation of rule-based syllabification into the psycholinguistic domain, suggesting that an alternative constraint-based approach might be more appropriate. We then review Optimality Theory (OT) and present an approach to syllabic parsing in terms of OT that can elegantly model the processing differences between English and French and account readily for the linguistic facts of English.2 Finally, the model is implemented in a computer program using Perl. The implementation is interesting because i) it shows that the model proposed is computationally feasible, and ii) it demonstrates the use of several devices – serial constraint satisfaction and "local coding" – in reducing the candidate set.