process of dividing continuous speech into discrete syllables, a process in which the position of a syllable division is not always easy to decide upon. Most languages of the world syllabify and sequences as and or , with consonants preferentially acting as the onset of a syllable containing the following vowel. According to one view, English is unusual in this regard, in that stressed syllables attract following consonants, so that and syllabify as and , as long as the consonant cluster is a possible syllable coda; in addition, preferentially syllabifies with the preceding vowel even when both syllables are unstressed, so that occurs as . This is the analysis used in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. However, this view is not widely accepted, as explained in the following section. Syllable structure The syllable structure in English is (C)3V(C)5, with near-maximal examples being strengths (, a (C)3V(C)4 syllable, although it can also be pronounced or ) and twelfths (, a (C)2V(C)5 syllable, although it can also be pronounced , , or ). From the phonetic point of view, the analysis of syllable structures is a complex task: because of widespread occurrences of articulatory overlap, English speakers rarely produce an audible release of individual consonants in consonant clusters. This coarticulation can lead to articulatory gestures that seem very much like deletions or complete assimilations. For example, hundred pounds may sound like and jumped back (in slow speech, ) may sound like , but X-ray and electropalatographic studies demonstrate that inaudible and possibly weakened contacts or lingual gestures may still be made. Thus the second in hundred pounds does not entirely assimilate to a labial place of articulation, rather the labial gesture co-occurs with the alveolar one; the "missing" in jumped back may still be articulated, though not heard. Division into syllables is a difficult area, and different theories have been proposed. A widely accepted approach is the maximal onset principle: this states that, subject to certain constraints, any consonants in between vowels should be assigned to the following syllable. Thus the word leaving should be divided rather than *, and hasty is rather than * or *. However, when such a division results in an onset cluster which is not allowed in English, the division must respect this. Thus if the word extra were divided * the resulting onset of the second syllable would be , a cluster which does not occur initially