Re: THEORY: Ray on ambisyllabicity

Dirk:
> On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > Ray:
> > [...]
> > > As I said, I'm keeping an open mind on 'ambisyllabicity'.  At present, I
> > > find the ambisyllable analysis easier to swallow than ['h&p.i].
> >
> > Yeah. We need to ask Dirk how he accounts for:
> >
> >   Sal   [saw]
> >   Sally [sali]
> >
> > in demotic SE Insular English, if /l/ isn't in an onset in "Sally".
>
> Wow. This is very nice! Is the /l/ in 'Sally' not velarized at all?
That's right.

> This would be good evidence for [s&.li].
For /l/ being in the onset of the following syllable, at least.
(Cf. the way /r/ in nonrhotic accents must be in an onset, yet
can follow a lax vowel, as in "carry".)

> > Also:
> >
> >   hoe          [h@w]
> >   holy         [h@wli]   (/l/ only in 2nd syllable)
> >   whole, hole  [hOw]
> >   wholly       [hOwli]   (/l/ ambisyllabic, triggering vowel
> >                           allophone in 1st syllable)
>
> Hmmm. These are posers. So if I understand the forms you cite here,
> the <w> in the first pair of examples is part of the tense vowel,
> while in the second pair, it is the allophone of coda /l/; correct?
No, actually. Well, that may be how to do it in the final analysis,
but a comparison with RP suggests otherwise ("5" = dark L):

   hoe          [h@w]
   holy         [h@wli]   (/l/ only in 2nd syllable)
   whole, hole  [hOw5]
   wholly       [hOwli]   (/l/ ambisyllabic, triggering vowel
                           allophone in 1st syllable)

cf. nonconservative RP ("8" = barred u):

   coo          [k8]
   coolie       [k8li]
   cool         [ku5]
   coolly       [kuli]

If /l/ precedes a vowel then it is clear (= in following onset).
If /l/ follows a long vowel and doesn't precede a morpheme
boundary then it is not coda of the preceding syllable and
does not affect the realization of the preceding vowel. But
if /l/ does precede a morpheme boundary then it is coda of
the preceding syllable and does affect the realization of the
preceding vowel. (For similar evidence see also "failure/dahlia"
from another post of mine from today).

> If
> this is the case, then the behavior of the "ambisyllabic" /l/ is
> strange; "half" of it becomes [w], while the other "half" remains [l].
> This would seem to constitute good evidence for the covert gemination
> analysis of ambisyllabicity; there really are two parts to this /l/,
> and they are subject to different phonological processes.
Had you been interpreting the data correctly, this would be a sensible
conclusion, except that I'd be inclined to see a pseudogeminate sequence
of two /l/s rather than a geminate (= two structural positions sharing
segmental content), because the two /l/s are subject to the different
phonological processes. Note that some speakers do have "wholly" [hOw5li]
and "coolly" [ku5li], while yet others (but possibly not RP?) have
'true geminate' [hOwl:i] and [kul:i].

--And.