Re: syllable importance

Alexandre:

Muke already mentioned the importance of syllables in determining
stress patterns. In addition, many phonological alternations can be
best understood if syllable structure is assumed. An example from
English is the difference between light and dark (velarized) /l/.
Roughly, dark /l/ occurs in syllable codas; light /l/ occurs elsewhere.
(The whole story is more complicated than that, but this generalization
is essentially correct.) Another example comes from non-rhotic
varieties of English, where /r/ is deleted in coda position. Both of
these generalizations could be stated without appealing to syllables
and their structure, but at a cost; they become cumbersome to express
and involve disjunctive environments (i.e., "either before a consonant
*or* at the end of a word"), which is often a sign that a
generalization has been missed.

There is one offshoot of generative phonology (Government Phonology)
which makes use of onsets and rimes without the additional claim that
these are coordinated into syllables. It seems to work fairly well.

Dirk

On Tuesday, February 17, 2004, at 09:20  PM, Alexandre Lang wrote:

> are syllables really important in a language except for poetry?
> --
>   Alexandre Lang
>   allexpro@eml.cc
>
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--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie

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