Re: THEORY: Dirk on ambisyllabicity

On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, And Rosta wrote:

> Dirk:
> > (Some have even argued that ambisyllabic
> > consonants are really geminates in disguise since they also share the
> > property of belonging to two syllables at once; interesting that in
> > English many of these are written with two consonant letters, as in
> > the word 'happy'.)
>
> What is the argument for them being geminates in disguise? -- Given
> that they're not lengthened phonetically, and given that some
> English speakers (e.g. me) have, at a phonological level, minimal
> pairs such as _stilly_ (adj. [archaic]) [stIli] vs. _stilly_ (adv. <
> still + -ly) [stIlli].
The arguments are as follows (as I understand the issue):

1.  These medial consonants are affiliated to the left because
otherwise lax vowels would appear in open syllables, which is not
attested word-finally (pace Ray, and the Northern dialect evidence he
cites).

2. They are affiliated to the right because of "universal" principles
of syllable structure; namely, syllables should have onsets where
possible.

3. Having a single segment occupy a place in two separate syllables
violates universal principles of constituency; i.e., the
representation [a[b]c] is not well formed, where [ab] and [bc] are
taken to be constituents.

4.      Therefore, an ambisyllabic consonant really occupies two
positions and is hence a geminate.

I don't find argument 2 compelling *in this case*, and so I don't
really consider "ambisyllabic" consonants to be covert geminates.
Especially given that they are not pronounced particularly long. I
prefer syllabifying such consonants to the left (hence 'happy' =
[h&p.i], since I *do* find the distributional argument (1) convincing.

> FWIW (= not very much), my conclusion is that timing units are separate
> from syllable structural units. E.g. (using O = onset, R = rhyme, T =
> timing units):
>
>      O     R   O R          O     R     O R
>     / \   / \ /  |         / \   / \    | |
>    T   T T   T   T        T   T T   T   T T
>    |   | |   |   |        |   | |    \ /  |
>    s   t i   l   i        s   t i     l   i
>
>        [stIli]              [stIlli]
I would agree. I would go further and say that onsets are not involved
in timing relations, and that such relations are best expressed by
morae.

            s     s              s     s
           /|    /|             /|\   /|
          / m   / m            / m m / m
         /  |  /  |           /  | |/  |
        st  I l   i          st  I l   i

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu