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II. The phonological natureof the beginning of the word1. IntroductionThe aim of this chapter is to demonstrate some consequences of the proposalwhich allows us to replace the boundary marker ‘#’ with a fullyphonological object, i.e. the empty CV unit (Lowenstamm 1999). Inparticular, we shall provide some evidence for the inactive character ofthe initial CV unit in Polish. The ‘static’ proof concerns co-occurrencerestrictions holding at the left edge of the word in Polish. The ‘dynamic’one deals with a fortition process found in the Kurp dialect of Polish. Itwill become evident that the initial CV unit plays a pivotal role in variousphonological phenomena and contributes to the explanation of certainfacts. Although the discussion in this chapter concerns the syllablestructure and syllabification mainly in Polish, some reference to otherlanguages can also be found here.There are some questions concerning Polish complex consonant clusterswhich we have not mentioned yet. They arise due to the replacementof the word boundary marker with the empty CV unit. This is especiallytrue in the case of the consonant sequences occurring at the wordleft margin. Therefore, in this chapter we shall not only propose a solutionto traditional problems, but also tackle newly formulated questions.It will be shown that Polish facts concerning the syllabification of consonantclusters at the beginning of the word can be given a uniform account.Additionally, the solutions applied in this chapter will help us understandproblems which have rarely been addressed in the past, likethe implicational relationship between cluster complexities and consonantsequences in languages. To achieve this goal, the syllable structure