0 containing three or more syllables:
The word "internationalism" is polysyllabic.
In the polysyllabic conditions, 1 child did not produce any falling contours and 4 children did not produce any rising contours.
They uncover an additional phonological factor : vowel insertion is more likely in monosyllabic than in polysyllabic words.
In these dialects, accent falls on the initial syllable of polysyllabic forms, which retains its lexical tone.
There was substantially more deletion of tokens in monosyllabic words (22.2%) than in polysyllabic words (14.7%) in the overall dataset.
This is exemplified below with nouns that are low-toned on the first syllable in their non-diminutive polysyllabic prefixed form.
The polysyllabic word forgot allows 'th' despite its final syllable stress arguably because the high frequency monosyllabic word got exhibits it.
In sum, polysyllabic utterances potentially entail an extra degree of effort at the respiratory and/or laryngeal levels of speech control.
The fact that the final syllable of a polysyllabic word is never stressed follows from an undominated constraint.
