The syllable paradox refers to the existence of conflicting evidence on the importance of the syllable as an encoding unit. On one hand is the rarity of syllable errors [Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., 1979, Speech errors as evidence for a serial-ordering mechanism in sentence production, in Cooper, W. E. & Walker, E. C. T., eds., “Sentence processing: Psycholinguistic studies presented to Merril Garrett, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 295-342], suggesting that the syllable does not have the status of a unit, if units are to be defined as speech-stream segments that frequently slip (e.g., exchange with others of their type). But on the other hand, the syllable seems to be very important because there is a syllable position constraint on sound errors. A moving sound nearly always retains its syllabic position when moving to another syllable.
- Dell (2004), Pag. 146