Re: Gzarondan: Phonological Review

"Thomas R. Wier" wrote, quoting myself:

> >    * The inside of a syllable may contain any vowel or diphthong, or
> >      else one of the following (known as the Lateral Series):
> >     /Il/ /El/ /8:l/ /al/ /Ol/.
>
> /l/ here is presumably not a glide, but what then motivates it being
> in the syllabic nucleus? Or am I misinterpreting you here?
It's the simplest way to describe the syllable structure. The syllable
[t8:5n] is possible, but the syllable [ta:5n] is not possible, although
the syllable [ta:5] *is* possible. The most succinct and most natural
way to characterise the possibilities is to say that [8:5] is one of a
number of structures that are treated by the phonology as rather like
diphthongs (I don't think they're true diphthongs but they share some
things in common with diphthongs) whereas [a:5] is not one of those,
so you can't get [a:5] without setting the coda of the syllable as
/l/, which rules out the possibility of [a:5n], whereas [8:5n] is fine
because the coda is free to contain the /n/.

> >  * Stress gravitates toward syllables beginning with an approximant,
> >    velar fricative, lateral or trill.
>
> Prosodic phonologists like Megan Crowhurst have told me that there
> are no languages in which the onset has any role in syllabic weight;
> only the coda has any such role.  However, what counts as a moraic
> syllable may depend on whether it's an approximant or nasal, etc.
> So, if you just switch "beginning" to "ending", the tendency you describe
> here will be very natural.  (Assuming you want naturalness, of course.)
Really? This is something that feels very intuitive to me. Certain
consonants are characteristically articulated with slightly more
energy than others, which is absorbed by increasing the volume of the
following vowel. It sounds wholly plausible and sensible. Besides, I
created this rule by starting with a meagre wordlist and an intuitive
feel for how syllables should be stressed, and looking for patterns
in the words where I felt that the stress should not lie on the
initial syllable. But no languages at all follow my intuition and
allow a consonant to influence the stress on the following vowel?
That's ... rather shocking, really!

Anyway, thanks very much for commenting on my phonology. I appreciate
it. Even if you end up criticising rules that I'm rather attached to.
:-)

Adrian.

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