Re: USAGE: syllables

At 00:32 13/06/03, you wrote:
>Hi!
>
>Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...> writes:
>...
> > (1)  Syllables are typically introduced by consonants.
> > (2)  Sequences of consonants typically occur at the beginnings of
> > syllables.
> > (3)  The sonority of consonants introducing a syllable should increase.
>
>As I understood it, the Georgian word 'vprtskvni' is one syllable...
>(Ok, ok, that's the standard, lame Georgian example.  Sorry. :-) Still
>interesting that it is one syllable.  No vocalic 'r' for example.)

The whole matter of syllables can get very messy - there's the matter of
for what purpose, at the very least.  The syllables they taught me in
elementary school were a matter of where to place the hyphen when a word is
split over a line break.  (And these rules, I find, don't always apply in
musical scores, where a greater attempt is made at having syllables ending
in a vowel!)

I've heard (and it seems to be true of me) that words like "tiny" are in
terms of breath flow (I don't know how to put that technically)
monosyllabic.  And interestingly, it seems to be these
"really-monosyllabic" disyllables that take the comparative in "-er" rather
than "most" normally (although that is not a hard and fast rule).

On the other hand, in terms of sonority, I recall arguing with the teacher
when I was 8 (if it wasn't 7) that "sail" has two syllables - the syllabic
l was to my ear clearly more sonorous than the glide at the end of the
diphthong (if only I had had the vocabulary to explain back then!).

To confuse matters further, I recall that Roger Lass found it convenient to
invoke ambisyllabicity to describe English at some point (though I cant
quite recall why).  (I'm recall this mostly because I invented
ambisyllabicity myself when I was in elementary school, and was glad to see
someone else thought it useful....)

Ian

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