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Sonorant conspiracy123ing. Thus, for example, Siedler ‘settler’ and Ordner ‘usher’ will be realisedas [ ® ziÉtlŒ] and [ ® /O¨tnŒ] respectively. Since both the former and the latterforms exhibit the same stress pattern, have the obstruent in the same positionand contain the same agentive suffix – er, it must be the sonorant /r/and its elemental make-up which is responsible for the lack of devoicing ofthe preceding obstruent.The conclusion that can be drawn from both the English and Germandata above is that in the vast majority of cases a bogus cluster can beseparated by the schwa in related forms, which is especially true in German.Moreover, when the schwa is syncopated, we arrive at the boguscluster or a syllabic consonant. The latter choice is connected with thetempo of speech. Thus, it follows that all three phenomena boil down toa single structure, i.e. a consonant followed by a sonorant which are separatedby the empty nucleus. One of the most urgent questions to answer,however, is the ban on the word-initial bogus clusters and vowel syncope.Recall that syllabic consonants are reported to be present at the left marginat least in English. In other words, whichever representation wechoose, i.e. a governed empty nucleus or Interonset Government, there isnothing in the GP theory which would rule out such clusters from the wordinitialposition. A similarly urgent problem is the origin of syllabic consonantsand bogus clusters or, to put it differently, the question why theyarise in the first place. Thus, in what follows we shall address the latterquestions along with some minor problems outlined in the sections above.We start with the progressive nasal assimilation in German.4. Sonorant conspiracy4.1. IntroductionIn this section we would like to propose a unified solution to seeminglyunrelated phenomena which have been introduced and discussed above,that is, vowel syncope, bogus clusters, and syllabic consonants. Moreover,we shall address the questions and problems outlined in the firstpart of the chapter. The solution to be offered integrates all three structuresand accounts for the traditional problems. We begin the discussionwith the syllabic consonants.