Re: Extra Syllabic Consonants
| From: | R A Brown <ray@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, September 15, 2005, 14:19 |
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Chris Bates wrote:
> I posted this on the ZBB, but I'm interested in extra syllabicity and
> anything anyone can say about it, so I'd love to hear from anyone here
> too:
Licensed extrasyllabicity or contingent syllabicity? or both?
A most interesting paper, which I need to re-read (probably more than
once again). But I would dearly like to *hear* the Bella Coola words and
phrases as well.
A sentence that stood out for me was:
"Segment-based approach has to be discarded"
I think some of the phonological problems we encounter are due to taking
a purely segmental approach, i.e. phones & phonemes. Sometimes other
approaches, like the prosodic theory, are useful IMO.
I am particularly interested the way moraicity is used as an explanation
in this paper. I am familiar enough with moraicity in ancient Greek (and
_Classical_ Latin) prosody, and from Japanese - but this seems, shall we
say, a bit different ;)
> which argues that many of the long clusters of consonants in Bella
> Coola are extra syllabic, and indeed that famous words from the
> language like the
>
> xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłs
> xł-p̓x̣ʷłt-łp-łł-s
> have-bunchberry-plant-pluperf-pos
> “he had had in his possession a bunchberry
> plant”
>
> which contain only obstruents have no syllables whatsoever.
Yes, which goes counter to the idea that a pronounceable 'word' must
have a least one syllable. But then I am reminded of what Crystal write
about 'syllable':
"Providing a precise definition of syllable is not an easy task, and
there are several theories in both phonetics and phonology......."
[A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics]
So arguably whether xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłs has any syllables or not will depend
upon one's definition of 'syllable'.
The comment on obstruents is also interesting. Indeed Pike's definition
of vocoids would seem to exclude fricatives. But AFAIK voiced fricatives
can and do act as syllabic nuclei in some languages so, presumably,
should be classed as vocoids. But cannot voiceless fricatives also act
as syllabic nuclei? The nucleus of the exclamation 'pst!' is surely [s].
IIRC it has been posited that Etruscan allowed /s/ and /f/ to serve as
syllabic nuclei - but of course we have no way of checking (without time
travel). Are there examples in actual spoken languages (besides, of
course, interjections like 'pst')?
Looks interesting - but 33 pages - it'll have to wait, but i have
downloaded it.
Um - I don't see a problem with more conventional approach in English.
> So what does everyone think? I remember an argument I had with Ahribar
> a while ago about syllables and Bella Coola and whether some of the
> consonants were syllabic or not... do you believe in extrasyllabicity?
Certain consonants can - and not uncommonly do - form syllabic nuclei.
How this relates to Bella Coola would be too presumptive of me to say,
as I know next to nothing about the language and have never heard it
spoken. There does seem to be some case for extrasyllabicity, but
fundamentally one needs to define syllabicity first. And there does not
seem to be agreement among either phonologists or phoneticians about the
precise definition of 'syllable'
> Do you think that an analysis that says that xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłs has no
> syllables is correct?
I remain to be convinced :)
--
Ray
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http://wwww.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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