“Syllabication” in English according to John Walker’s dictionary
Abstract
This paper examines the principles adopted for syllabification in John Walker’s Critical
Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor Of the English Language. The analysis will be based on the
introductory remarks of the dictionary (538 and seq.) and on a subcorpus from the dictionary
comprising some of the entries commented by Walker (Trapateau 2010). We will confront Walker’s
choices for syllable division in English with some of the contemporary controversies (among others,
Gussenhoven 1986, Duchet 1993) of dictionary-based syllable boundaries in the light of orthoepist
prescriptivism (Beal 1999, Beal 2004a, , Beal 2004b, Beal 2007, Beal 2009, Ranson 1997).
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)