English syllabification as the interaction of markedness constraints*

Abstract. The present study offers an Optimality‐Theoretic analysis of the syllabification of intervocalic consonants and glides in Modern English. It will be argued that the proposed syllabifications fall out from universal markedness constraints – all of which derive motivation from other languages – and a language‐specific ranking. The analysis offered below is therefore an alternative to the traditional rule‐based analyses of English syllabification, e.g. Kahn (1976), Borowsky (1986), Giegerich (1992, 1999) and to the Optimality‐Theoretic treatment proposed by Hammond (1999), whose analysis requires several language‐specific constraints which apparently have no cross‐linguistic motivation.