Experimental investigation on syllable geometry in Spanish

The behaviour of Spanish subjects in performing segment(s) substitutions and blend preference tasks on nonsense (phonotactically allowed) materials was investigated, in order to shed light on the internal organization of the syllable. Substitution tasks did not yield any clear indication, whereas the blend task provided evidence for the preference of the 'Onset+Rhyme' structure over 'Body+Coda'. Thus, the situation seems to be very similar to the one observed with Italian subjects, where only a weak tendency towards the right-branching structure emerged. By contrast, English presents a very strong orientation in this direction. In addition, English presents a strong word-onset facilitation, whereas Spanish (and Italian) show a very neat word-offset facilitation.