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Focusing on sibilant-stop onsets, this paper deals with syllabic complexity in Romance languages. At its core are two empirical studies that address the complex case of French: a type-level study is based on the Petit Robert, and a token-level study uses Parisian and Southern French corpus data elaborated in the framework of the PFC program (Phonologie du Français Contemporain). The paper identifies three factors behind the emergence of phonotactic complexity: (a) vowel elision, (b) borrowing, and (c) expressivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the phonology of schwa in Standard French has been extensively studied, the same is not true of many varieties of French. and in particular of Cajun French. This paper will focus on word-initial metathesis, a widespread phenomenon of Cajun French. Word-initial metathesis occurs either after a consonant cluster (e.g. grenier-gernier ‘attic’) or after a single /r/ (eg. retourner-ertourner ‘to return’), in which case the conditioning environment is larger than the phonological word. I will show that the two phenomena are two aspects of the same process. I will first consider two non- linear approaches to metathesis and show that they are both unable to explicitly point out the triggering force of the sonorant /r/. I will present a prosodic analysis where the initial syllable is degenerate in that it lacks a vocalic nucleus. Epenthesis of a vocalic segment will save the deficient syllable. Surface differences between the two types of metatheses will be attributed to weight distinctions within the French syllable. It will be claimed that epenthesis, a powerful device which should be highly constrained, is well motivated in the present context because the segments involved form a natural phonetic class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]