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148 Bogus clusters, syllabic consonants and vowel syncope. . .and Northern Standard German. It follows that [dr] and [tr] are the bestcandidates to undergo the change and contract the IG relation. A similarsituation can be found in English. To simplify, the alveolar plosive [t] issaid to be the most easily affected consonant in English (Paradis andPrunet 1991). As pointed out by Harris (1994:222) in certain contextsthe plosive in question can be weakened to a glottal stop in formssuch as, for example, pottery [p/ri], battery [bÏ/ri] (in the expression assaultand battery). However, many speakers differentiate the latter wordand battery [bÏtri] (car) in which the lenition does not affect the plosive.Note that both forms involve the vowel-syncope site. In other words, thecluster [tr] is separated by a syncope-prone schwa. Harris (1994) concludesthat for speakers who differentiate [bÏ/ri] and [bÏtri] a differentstructure must be assumed. The cluster in the former example is separatedby the governed empty nucleus, 24 while the latter must be representedas a true branching onset. In other words, the form [bÏtri] has beenreanalysed as having an internal branching onset. Looking at the situationfrom the perspective of the findings in this chapter, we can say thatthe cluster in [bÏ/ri] is the result of Proper Government which strikesthe nucleus hosting the left branch of the syllabic consonant. On theother hand, the cluster in [bÏtri] has experienced a restructuring intothe Infrasegmental Governing domain, similarly to the German case discussedabove.To sum up, from the discussion in this section it follows that bogusclusters and vowel syncope in English are closely related phenomena.Both structures have the same distribution, namely, they are bannedfrom the word-initial and word-final position. They operate on the identicalconsonant clusters, that is, an obstruent followed by a sonorant.Finally, they have the same origin, that is, a syllabic consonant. Thesolution proposed in this section resolves two traditional problems, thatis, the obligatory presence of sonorants in bogus clusters and the banimposed on such sequences to appear in the word-initial position. Thelatter can be explained only if we assume that the initial empty CV unitin English is active. The findings are then confirmed by similar examplesfrom German. Additionally, we have looked at the rare cases of bogusclusters which appear word-initially in German, only to find out thatthe extreme point a syllabic sonorant can reach is a governing relationwith the preceding obstruent, i.e. Infrasegmental Government.24In his analysis of [t] lenition in different English accents, Harris (1994) indicatesthat a context in which the stop undergoes glottalisation is always before anempty nucleus.