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134 Bogus clusters, syllabic consonants and vowel syncope. . .(25) a. PG b. PGV|VC|CVCV|PV|VC|CVCV|V«®R«®RLic. Lic.In (25a) the position occupied by the schwa is properly governed by thefollowing empty nucleus. The schwa disappears making room for the sonorantto spread. However, it has been mentioned above that final emptynuclei are not able to govern lexically present nuclei. Thus, (25a) isnot a possible representation of syllabic consonants. The impossibility offinal empty nuclei to govern lexically present vowels is additionally confirmedby the fact that the schwa disappears only before sonorants andnever before obstruents, e.g. cabinet [ ® kÏbIn«t], definite [ ® def ®n«t], barrack[ ® bÏr«k], chocolate [ ® tSk « l«t], separate [ ® sep«r«t], etc. Nobody would be persuadedof the validity of the claim that final empty nuclei can govern thepreceding schwa only if the latter appears before a sonorant and neverbefore an obstruent. The same line of reasoning applies to the word-internaland the word-initial position where a syllabic consonant is followedby an audible vowel (25b). Thus, if a full vowel is able to govern theschwa before a sonorant, it should in principle also govern the schwabefore an obstruent. The latter situation, however, is again not admittedin the language. Another consequence of the fact that the sonorant in(25b) is followed by the full vowel is that the former is licensed. Fullvowels, unlike empty ones, are sound licensors. Thus, it follows that thesonorant in (25b) appears in a strong position. It escapes government,while being licensed at the same time. If we want to claim that syllabicconsonants arise in response to positional weakness, there is no reasonwhy the sonorant should be active in (25b). From the discussion above itfollows that both representations in (25) are incorrect. Vowels which arelexically present are never targets of Proper Government in English.One observation that follows directly from the discussion above isthat in English syllabic consonants appear before both the empty andfull nuclei. Given the fact that they are always preceded by the schwa,we can conclude that syllabic consonants appear intervocalically. Furthermore,according to the Coda Mirror both contexts, i.e. before the emptynucleus and intervocalically, are weak, hence it follows that syllabic consonantsarise in response to positional weakness (26).