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Re: Morae (was: Re: Lurkers, poetic forms)

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Thursday, April 27, 2000, 2:24
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 04:45:29 +0100, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
wrote:

>Allen is correct IMHO to censure the use of 'long' & 'short' to apply both >to vowel length and to syllabic weight. This usage has certainly caused >much misunderstanding and confusion in the past. His use of _length_ >(long/short) to apply only to vowels, and _weight_ (heavy/light) to apply >to syllables is a welcome and a long-overdue reform in terminology. (As >Allen observes, ancient Hindu phoneticians were well aware of this >distinction centuries ago.)
I can see the point. I've used "long" and "short" to describe syllables in Tirelat, but perhaps "heavy" and "light" would be better. It might still be confusing, since a "short" (or "light") syllable can end in a voiceless consonant, unlike Greek or Latin. Hmm.... I just got an idea that might end up changing Tirelat phonology yet again. Break up diphthongs into separate syllables, then add the glottal stop as a phoneme and define "light" syllables as ending in a voiceless consonant. It might work. -- languages of Azir------> ----<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>--- Thryomanes/Herman Miller "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any h i l r i . o thing till they were sure it would offend no body, m l e @ o c m there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin