Dissecting the consonant duration ratio

It has been argued that the duration ratio (DR) of two consonants in C1C2 serves as a diagnostic of syllabification: if greater than 1, then C1C2 is a syllable onset; if (approximately) 1, C1C2 is a coda– onset sequence. If valid, this diagnostic would provide a straightforward way of assessing syllabic organization. We examined the validity of the DR using the Wisconsin X-Ray Microbeam corpus, which due to its size permits a robust test. We also informed our evaluation by another archive of kinematics and acoustics, with finer comparisons. These corpora extend an evaluation of the DR to word-medial clusters, in addition to initial and crossword contexts wherein the DR has been studied before. Our results indicate that duration ratio patterns previously thought to be related to syllabification derive from levels of representation or prosody which are not specifically syllabic. These patterns are conditioned by prosodic effects and manner contrasts.