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146 Bogus clusters, syllabic consonants and vowel syncope. . .biblischzwiebligebnenBüglerKuglerregnet[biÉblIS][ ® tsviÉblI][ ® /eÉbn«n][byÉglŒ][ ® kuÉglŒ][reÉgn«t][biÉplIS][ ® tsviÉplI][ ® /eÉpn«n][byÉklŒ][ ® kuÉklŒ][reÉkn«t]‘biblical’‘oniony’‘level’‘sb. who irons’surname‘it rains’In Brockhaus’s (1995) analysis such forms are said to possess bogusclusters which are separated by a governed empty nucleus. She provesher point by indicating that the clusters in question are separated bya schwa in underived or related forms, e.g. Rodel [roÉd«l] ‘toboggan’,Ordentlich [ ® /OŒ8d«ntlI] ‘tidy’, Bibel [ ® bi:b«l] ‘Bible’, Zwiebel [ ® tsviÉb«l] ‘onion’,eben [ ® /eÉb«n] ‘level, adj.’, bügeln [byÉg«ln] ‘iron’, Kugel [ ® kuÉg«l] ‘ball’, Regen[reÉg«n] ‘rain’. What we are facing here is a regular schwa-zero alternationwhich brings to mind the similarity to English vowel syncope. Moreover,as reported by Brockhaus (1995), the schwa in the latter formscan be optionally replaced with a syllabic consonant, e.g. [roÉd®l], [ ® tsviÉb®l],[ ® kuÉg®l], [reÉg®N], etc. As pointed out in section 4.2 above in German, as inEnglish, word-final empty nuclei are not able to govern lexically presentvowels. It means that a final sonorant in Kugel [ ® kuÉg«l], for example, appearsin the worst scenario; it is unlicensed but at the same time governed.In consequence, in order to survive, it spreads and replaces the precedingschwa winding up as a syllabic consonant. However, in a situationwhen the sonorant happens to be followed by a realised nucleus, for exampleof a vowel-initial suffix, a new situation arises: the nuclear positionoccupied by the left branch of the syllabic consonant is governed by thefollowing suffix vowel and we arrive at the bogus cluster, e.g. [ro:dlŒ] andthe forms in (36). Thus, the solution proposed for both English andGerman bogus clusters captures two facts, namely, the rigid order of consonantsforming a bogus cluster, that is ‘CR’ and their absence fromthe word-initial position. Moreover, note that what is a true cluster in certainforms, e.g. [gl]auben ‘believe’, [gl]ocke ‘bell’, is a result of the formationof syllabic consonants in others, e.g. Bü[gl]er, Ku[gl]er. The statusof the latter cluster is betrayed by the fact that the velar plosive [g] inthis context is realised by some speakers as []. This results naturallyfrom the fact that the former appears in the domain of InfrasegmentalGovernment (see Chapter One), while the latter is followed by a governedempty nucleus, which is a lenition site according to the Coda Mirror.We should also emphasise the fact that there are instances where theban on the initial bogus clusters seems to be violated. The violation ofthe ban boils down to the appearance of [kn] and [gn] clusters word-initially.Recall the examples represented under (14) above. According to

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