Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, etc.

Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:

> Here you have your syllables back:
>
> --- An/dre/as Jo/hans/son <and/jo/@/FREE/./F/R> wrote:
> > Years / la/ter, as / I / be/gan / to / de/ve/lop /an
> / in/de/pen/dent / in/te/rest / in / lan/gua/ge, / and
> / star/ted / rea/ding / books / on /  the / sub/ject,
> / I / re/a/li/zed / that / the / con/cept / of /
> syl/la/ble / was / sup/po/sed / to / ap/ply / not /
> me/re/ly / to / wri/ting, / but / al/so / to /
> pro/nun/cia/tion! / (In / Swe/dish, / li/ke /
> Eng/lish, / ter/mi/no/lo/gy.)
> >
> >
> >   An/dre/as
>
> True, there may be some differences between written
> and oral syllables. For ex, "lan/gua/ge" (written)
> could be treated as lan/guage (oral), me/re/ly as
> mere/ly, and realized as re/a/lized.
Clearly, French tradition differs from what I'm used to - syllabifications
like "lan/gua/ge" seem fully absurd to me. Guess they make more sense in
French, were the silent 'e's actually make themselves heard sometimes.

I guess I as a kid would have syllabified (Swedish) _orange_ as "o-ran-ge",
but today I'd consider that simply wrong (as long as we're not speaking of
masc sg definite!).

> Anyway, a
> computer program can rather easily cut any text into
> syllables, provided you give him the rules applying
>                              ^^^
Three-gender systems are wonderful, aren't they? :)

> for the language you consider. It will be easier than
> translating automatically the same text into phonetic
> ! (at least for English and French).
Mark Rosenfelder's written a programme that gets English pronunciation
basically right 85% or so of the time.

                                                    Andreas

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