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

From:Adrian Morgan <morg0072@...>
Date:Thursday, July 19, 2001, 0:18
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.

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Muke Tever <alrivera@...>