Re: Language change that complicates the syllable structure

Nik Taylor sikyal:

> > This is pretty rare. I can't think of a single instance where
> > morphological considerations affected syllable structure.
>
> English -ed, -es -> -d, -s (however, those might've been part of a
> larger change to be fair)
Isn't this just a phonetic change? Those unstressed {e}s were lost for
purely phonetic reasons, and the morphological structure was merely
incidental.

My understanding of the OP was something like this: a morpheme like -ki,
say, comes into a language that doesn't allow coda consonants. But there
are some stems like tap-, which normally are attatched to vowel morphemes.
When these two come together, you get tapki, introducing a coda /p/.
(Unless you make /pk/ an onset, but let's ignore that possibility.)

I don't think this ever happens. If the morphology gives rise to a
particular syllable structure, the language has to allow it in the first
place. If not, the morpheme will change, or some epenthesis/deletion will
happen to make the word conform to existing templates.

--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

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