Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, Syllables, Genders, Email Servers etc.

On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 10:32:09AM -0800, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> As I understand from the reactions to my post about
> syllables, English speakers don't consider written
> syllables at all, but only the spoken ones.
Correct.  The very idea of a "written syllable" is to me nonsensical
- other than as regards the correct breaking of words across line
boundaries.

> There are 3 written vowels, a(n)-a-e, and the 2 last
> ones are separated by a consonant, so they cannot
> belong to the same syllable.
But the last one is silent, and therefore doesn't count.  A
silent syllable is completely nonsensical.

> It's even more puzzling for me to consider that
> "language" should be divided into "lang-guage". There
> is only one g in language, how could it belong to 2
> different syllables?
The word "language" divides into "lan-guage".  However,
the "n" in "lan" is pronounced as [N] rather than [n] because
it is followed by a velar.  Therefore, a phonetic representation
of the syllables is something like [l&N.gwIdZ] modulo dialectical
differences.  In English quasi-phonetics, [N] is represented by the
digraph "ng", so that you could reasonably write "lang-guage" as a
phonetic syllabification of "language".  In that case, though, there
is no "g" in "lang"; there is just an "ng".

-Mark