Re: open/closed syllables

On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, E-Ching Ng wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> As I understand it, a closed syllable ends with a consonant and an open
> syllable ends on its vowel.  So stan 'stone' has one closed syllable, but
> stanas 'stones' has an open syllable sta and a closed syllable nas.
Thanks. This is about what I thought. But I was getting confused because
of how the syllables break. I was seeing the above as stan + as and
thinking the first syllable didn't look open .

 >
> Am curious.  Unless they're talking about the Old English to Middle English
> transition period, I don't really see why they're talking about open and
> closed syllables.
It came up in a couple of contexts. One was how the old words relate to
modern words, so yes they are talking about transistion. Another context
was claiming certain vowels were more common in open or closed syllables.

I was particularly interested in the transitions, since I am mapping out a
conlang project for English without the Norman conquest (and the
subsequent influx of French). Its still in an embryonic stage so I won't
go into details yet. Stay tuned...

David

>
> E-Ching
>
>
> At 06:18 PM 3/8/2001 -0500, David Stokes wrote:
> >I'm reading about Old English and I keep encountering references to open
> >and closed syllables without any explanation of these terms.
> >
> >Can someone help me ?
> >
> >Thanks
> >David
>

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