Ambisyllabicity in English: How real is it?

In an English phrase like "an ice cream", does the /n/ remain the coda of the first syllable, or is it resyllabified into the second syllable so that the phrase is no different from "a nice cream"? Or is it ambisyllabic: belonging simultaneously to both syllables? This is an issue that still remains a mystery today. In this study, we revisit this issue with the help of a recently developed technique of using F0 turning point as reference for segmental alignment. In two experiments, we investigated syllable affiliation of the intervocalic consonant at word boundaries in Southern British English by comparing cases where the intervocalic nasal is word initial, word final or final plus initial (geminate). Results show that initial and final nasals differ little in their F0 alignment, indicating that final nasals are virtually resyllabified. Nasal geminates, in contrast, seem to be still dividable into coda and onset. Despite the shift in alignment, the underlying affiliation of the coda nasal is nevertheless still reflected by shortened duration of both the nasal murmur and the preceding vowel. We interpret the finding as evidence in support of the timestructure model of the syllable (Xu & Liu, 2006).