Syllable Analysis and Syllable Inventories in English and Chinese

There is a common view that the syllable structure of English is more complicated than that of Chinese, and English uses far more syllables than Chinese. However, previous statements on the size of the English syllable inventory are often based on estimates, which differ widely, ranging from thousands to over 158, 000. This study compares several approaches to the analysis of English syllables and propose that (i) syllabification should follow the Length-Stress Correspondence (whereby a stressed syllable should have a long rime and an unstressed syllable should have a short rime) and (ii) the maximal syllable size ought to be based on non word-edge positions. In the proposed approach, English and Chinese have similar syllable structures and similar sizes of syllable inventories. In the monomorphemic lexicon, if all consonants are included, the English syllable inventory is about twice the size of the Chinese inventory, and if extra word-edge consonants are excluded, the English syllable inventory is 1. 5 times the size of Chinese inventory. Our study offers new statistical results and a new perspective for comparative studies on syllables in different languages.