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142 Bogus clusters, syllabic consonants and vowel syncope. . .The above table presents a possibility which has not been discussed yet,namely, a situation where a syllabic consonant governs the nucleus occupiedby another syllabic consonant, e.g. general [ ® dZenr®l], marginal [ ® mAÉdZn®l],personal [ ® päÉsn®l], national [ ® nÏSn®l]. In principle both final sonorants, as occurringin a weak position, should become syllabic. However, since the nucleiwhich host the left branch of the syllabic nucleus behave like regular vowels,one more option becomes available, that is, syncope followed bya syllabic consonant (33).(33) PGC|nV|ÏC|SV«CnV«C®lV|PIn (33) the final sonorant [l] appears before an empty nucleus, hence itspreads and docks on to the preceding nucleus. It is not allowed to governvowels which are lexically present, so the government strikes thepreceding nasal, which in this situation also becomes syllabic. Only inthis situation is restructuring possible, i.e. the syllabic [®l] can govern thepreceding nucleus which hosts the left branch of the syllabic nasal. Inconsequence we arrive at the form with a syncopated vowel followed bya non-syllabic [n] and the syllabic lateral, that is [ ® nÏSn®l].Finally, if it is true that the first step to syncope is the spreadingof a sonorant, i.e. syllabic consonant, we should be able to find word-initialsyllabic consonants, while vowel syncope should be banned fromthis position. In the previous section it was pointed out that syllabic consonantsdo arise word-initially, e.g. until [ ®n ® tIl], balloon [b®l ® uÉn], convulsed[k ®n ® v¿lst], confetti [k ®n ® feti]. This was made possible because syllabic consonantsare able to govern the empty nucleus of the word-initial empty CVunit (see the representation in (29) above). Note, however, that the secondstep which leads to the vowel syncope is not possible in the word-initialposition. In other words, the restructuring from a syllabic consonant tovowel syncope is not admitted word-initially. This follows naturally fromthe existence of the word-initial empty CV unit advocated in this work (seeChapter One). Note that if the nucleus hosting the left branch of a syllabicconsonant were governed, the initial CV unit would be left out ungoverned.It follows that while balloon [b®l ® uÉn] is possible in English (34a), [bluÉn]is totally ruled out (34b).