This study examines derived words in English that contain two neighboring syllables with identical onsets and provides an analysis that explains the data of both prohibited and allowed non-preferred sequences of syllables. We propose a general markedness constraint that bans the non-favored consecutive syllables with the same onsets. Since the marked syllable sequence is suppressed across the morpheme boundary when followed mostly by auto-stressing suffixes, FtBin, B-Contig, and *Clash should dominate the dissimilatory onset constraint. This constraint ranking can explain the truncation of the base-final rime. However, when stress-neutral vowel-initial suffixes occur after the base-final syllable (CiVCi), newly formed consecutive syllables with identical onsets are tolerated. This type of data can be explained by ranking Parse-σ, FtBin, and B-Contig over the marked onset constraint. To account for the data where the marked adjacent syllables occur base-initially and base-medially, the general marked onset constraint should be overridden by other constraints, such as Anchor-L, *Clash, and Parse-σ. These constraints intervene with the dissimilatory onset constraint to occur, so that non-base final adjacent syllables with the same onsets are realized intact in the output. The unified constraint ranking proposed in this study accounts for various types of dissimilatory onset-derived English words.
Chin-Wan Chung (Sun,) studied this question.