Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

FFlores wrote:
> I suspect David is used to the traditional way of dividing words
> in English (we had a thread about this IIRC), where vowels, unless
> they are "long" (generally diphthongs) are not supposed to be left
> alone, and therefore you have "minute" /mInIt/ as "min-ute", while
> "minute" /maj'n(j)ut/ is "mi-nute". This kind of thing was shockingly
> strange to me at first -- now I think I've got it alright...
Well, the syllabification is due to the stress pattern.  /'mInIt/ would
initially be syllabified as /'mI.nIt/, but IV consonants tend to go with
the first if that one's stressed, so it's resyllabified as /'mIn.It/.
In fact, I suspect that the /I/ pronunciation is due (historically) to
that syllabification.

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