Final answer:
The word 'cleaned' has two spoken syllables. When pronounced, it has a vocal peak for 'clean-' and for '-ed,' indicating each syllable.
Step-by-step explanation:
The word cleaned consists of two spoken syllables. To determine the number of syllables in a word, you can either visually break the word into its vowel sounds, or say it aloud and count the number of separate peaks in vocalization.
This process can be called syllable segmentation. In the case of "cleaned," when you pronounce it, there is one peak of vocalization for 'clean-' and a second smaller peak for '-ed,' giving us two syllables in total. Therefore, the correct answer is b. 2.