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Bogus clusters and vowel syncope119segments are not permitted nor are segments which share more than oneelement (see section 3 above). Since [tl], [dl] clusters do have more thanone element in common this solution is, like the previous one, doomed tofailure and hence must be abandoned. 10 According to Brockhaus (1995)the latter ban is responsible for the absence of the word-initial [tl], [dl],[tn], [dn] clusters not only in English but also in German. Ruling out bothcoda-onset and branching onset representations, she is left with the thirdsolution, i.e. bogus clusters. Recall from the previous section that such clustersare represented as two onsets separated by the empty nucleus. Brockhaus(1995:191) justifies her choice by indicating that this empty nuclearposition is actually a vowel-zero alternation site (12).(12)RodelEdelbesiedelnhandelnPendelOrdentlich[ ® roÉd«l][ ® /eÉd«l][b« ® ziÉd«ln][ ® hand«ln][ ® pEnd«l][ ® /OŒ8d«ntlI]® ‘toboggan’‘noble’‘settle’‘act’‘pendulum’‘tidy’Brockhaus (1995:191) explains in a footnote that the examples in(12) illustrate careful pronunciation and that in rapid and/or casualspeech the schwa is not usually realised but the following sonorant becomessyllabic instead. Thus, the conclusion that can be drawn from the dataabove is that in German, just as in English, word-medial [tl]/[dl] and [tn]/[dn] sequences are separated by the empty nucleus. In short, they arebogus clusters. Brockhaus (1995) extends this solution to cover theremaining clusters in (11), that is, [bn]/[pn], [bl]/[pl] and [gn]/[kn], [gl]/[kl]. Note that the GP model points to the possibility of grantinga branching onset status to the [p/bl] and [g/kl] clusters. This solution,however, is once again ruled out by Brockhaus (1995), who points outthat in (11) such clusters are spurious. This is especially true in the caseof [kl] sequences. Very briefly, the realisation of the word-medial [kl] clustersin (11) has two variants, i.e., it can be realised as [k] plus the sonorantor the obstruent is weakened to the fricative [], [x] before [l]. Whatis crucial here is the fact that the latter change never appears in theword-initial position. She concludes that [kl] clusters are ambiguous inGerman. In other words, they constitute a branching onset word-initial-10Brockhaus (1995) works in a slightly different model of segmental representation.In her version nodes have to be taken into account for working out the complexityof an expression. This is not, however, essential to the present discussion.