Finite-State Syllabification

We explore general strategies for finite-state syllabification and describe a specific implementation of a wide-coverage syllabifier for English, as well as outline methods to implement differing ideas encountered in the phonological literature about the English syllable. The syllable is a central phonological unit to which many allophonic variations are sensitive. How a word is syllabified is a non-trivial problem and reliable methods are useful in computational systems that deal with non-orthographic representations of language, for instance phonological research, text-to-speech systems, and speech recognition. The construction strategies for producing syllabifying transducers outlined here are not theory-specific and should be applicable to generalizations made within most phonological frameworks.