ambisyllabicadj.
/ˌambᵻsᵻˈlabɪk/, U.S. /ˌæmbəsəˈlæbɪk/ Phonetics.
Of a sound: acting simultaneously as the coda of one syllable and the onset of a consecutive syllable; (also) of or relating to such a sound.
ΚΠ
1936 Amer. Speech 11 301 It is..ambisyllabic in positions where other cases of vowel plus consonant are ambisyllabic.
1964 R. H. Robins Gen. Linguistics iv. 138 Phonetically it is often hard to decide to which syllable an intervocalic consonant belongs.., and such consonants may have to be described phonetically as ambisyllabic, belonging to both.
1987 Canad. Jrnl. Linguistics 32 355 Another characteristic of English syllable structure..is the ambisyllabic nature of segments in certain positions—the fuzzy boundaries between certain syllables.
2008 A. D. Patel Music, Lang., & Brain iii. 129 If the phoneme sounds ambisyllabic then the boundary can be placed in the middle of the phoneme.
Derivatives
ˌambisyllaˈbicity n.
ΚΠ
1970 Language 46 675 M's concept which other writers call ambisyllabicity should be abandoned.
1983 Nature 14 July 160/1 Ambisyllabicity is prevalent in English, and syllable boundaries are..hard to identify.
2013 Q. Rev. Biol. 88 343/1 English is a stress-timed language with frequently unclear syllable boundaries (due to ambisyllabicity).
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2020; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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adj.1936