Re: orthographic syllabification [was: Re: Moraic codas]

dirk elzinga wrote, quoting myself:

> > I'll side with pro-duct every time, in this case. A syllable should
> > not end with an aspirated consonant. In most other cases I consider
> > syllable assignment of lone consonants to be arbitrary.
>
> ?!!! I've read this numerous times now, and I still don't know
> why aspirated consonants are invoked. The <d> in 'product' is
> not aspirated. It only ends a syllable orthographically and not
> phonologically (pace ambisyllabicity supporters), and then
> apparently only in North America.
OK, my imagination about the aspiration, but what I *meant* was a bit
like aspiration only different - viz, velocity of tongue escape.

When I say 'product', my tongue moves away from the 'd' pretty rapidly,
but when I say 'prod', my tongue presses even harder against my top
gums after I have finished voicing. Therefore if 'product' is broken
into 'prod-uct', then the tongue movement (compress then replace at
leisure) does not at all reflect that of the original word (move away
quickly). Intuitively I think the tongue movement should be preserved
under syllabification, hence my preference for pro-duct.

And is there any reason why phonological/orthographical syllabification
should differ more than they have to (splitting doubles is an obvious
example where they do, but apart from that)?

Adrian.

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