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72 The phonological nature of the beginning of the wordWhen confronted with data like those above the following question mayoccur to the reader, namely, is it possible to represent such clusters inthe Strict CV framework and preserve their distinctive Polish character?This question should receive extra attention as the same clustersappear in other, though related, languages, e.g. Czech, Slovak, and Serbo-Croatian(see Rowicka 1999a, 2003, Blaho 2001, 2002, Cyran2003, Scheer 2004). Before we address this question and try to give asatisfactory answer, let us compare the behaviour of such clusters invarious Slavic languages. It will become obvious that two separate representationsare required to capture the difference between the syllabicand trapped consonants.3.4. Syllabic vs. trapped consonantsIn this section we shall provide some evidence demonstrating that syllabicand trapped consonants, although related, call for two separaterepresentations. The discussion in this section draws heavily on Scheer’ s (2004) analysis as this is the most thorough analysis of the problemwe are aware of.It is commonly pointed out in the literature that Polish, with theexception of fast, casual speech, lacks syllabic consonants (Biedrzycki 1971, 1978, Rubach 1974). Consequently, in this language onlyvocalic nuclei count for metrical structure and can bear primary or secondarystress, unlike in some other Slavic languages, e.g. Czech, Slovakand Serbo-Croatian. Since from the phonotactic point of view Polishtrapped consonants resemble the clusters in the languages where thesonorant is syllabic, the difference between both structures must be establishedon different grounds, i.e. phonological processing.As has been mentioned above, sonorants, being spontaneously voiced,do not basically undergo final devoicing in Polish, unless they are trapped.It follows that sonorants are voiced word-finally, in word-final RRclusters and pre-vocalically, e.g. da[r] ‘gift’, da[l] ‘distance’, poka[rm]‘food’, da[rw] ‘tore, 3p.sg.’, [r]ama ‘frame’, ka[r]a ‘punishment’, etc. Moreover,they are voiced before an obstruent, e.g. wi[lk] ‘wolf’, no matterwhether the obstruent is phonologically voiceless as in the latter exampleor undergoes word-final devoicing as in wi[lk] — wi[lg]a ‘oriole, gen.pl./nom.sg.’ The only position where sonorants undergo devoicing is a‘trapped’ context (internal or final), e.g. [k °rf]i ‘blood, gen.sg.’, wia[t °r] ‘wind’respectively. Since in Polish only obstruents are granted the right to de-