Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Matt Pearson wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> >> (1)  VCV is almost always syllabified as V.CV, not VC.V
> >
> >Unless there's some resyllabification rule, like English /'h&p.i/ (which
> >can be shown by the fact that it's ['h&pi] and not [h&:p_hi])
>
> See my comment below...
>
> >> For example, when asked to break up the word "happy" [haepi] into
> >> syllables, many native speakers will hesitate between [hae.pi] and
> >> [haep.i].
> >
> >But it's pronounced as the second, as shown by the allophones.
>
> I generally pronounce it the first way - or at least, I find the
> first syllabification *much* more intuitive.
>
> >Syllable-initial voiceless stops are aspirated, and vowels followed by
> >voiceless obstruents are shorter.  /h&.pi/ would be [h&:p_hi], while
> >/h&p.i/ is [h&pi], the way it actually is.
>
> Syllable-initial voiceless stops only aspirate when they are
> word-initial and/or followed by a stressed vowel.  And anyway,
> if the /p/ were entirely syllable-final, then it would be unreleased,
> as it is in "capture", and for me it's definitely not unreleased.
>
> I think the source of the ambisyllabicity effect here has to do with
> conflicting phonotactic constraints in English:  On the one hand, there's
> a constraint against having a vowel-initial syllable following a
> consonant-final syllable, which forces the [h&.pi] analysis.  On
> the other hand, there's a constraint against syllables which end in
> short lax vowel, which forces the [h&p.i] analysis.  My guess is that
> for some speakers (like me), these constraints are equally ranked,
> and so the conflict between them is resolved by treating the
> consonant as ambisyllabic.  For other speakers (like you, I would
> suppose), one constraint ranks more highly than the other, and
> so there's no impression of ambisyllabicity.
Ambisyllabicity has always given me the oogies. Luckily I've
never had to deal with it in Gosiute. There's a little known
paper by Mike Hammond in which he makes the claim that
ambisyllabicity in English is really covert gemination. I think
this became part of his just-recently-appeared book on English
phonology (from Oxford University Press). I'll have to check
tomorrow when I'm back in my office.

BTW Paul, Hammond's book might be a gentler introduction to
phonology than the Dependency Phonology collection you're
reading now.

Dirk

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