Re: Justifying a stress pattern

Eugene Oh wrote:
> How can a long syllable end in a short vowel, with or without a following
> consonant...?
> That's what's confusing me. (:
In the older terminology that called syllables short or long (rather
than light or heavy), that is precisely what a 'long' syllable might be.
All blocked syllables are 'long' or heavy; thus if that coda is a short
vowel followed by a consonant the syllable is 'long' or heavy.

'Short' or light syllables are only those whose vowel is short and have
non consonant coda.
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MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
[snip]
 >
 > I had trouble understanding this, too.
 > If the final syllable ends in a short vowel followed by a single
consonant,
 > how is it a long syllable?

The traditional answer was that it was "long by position". This was
almost certainly due to an ancient Latin mistranslation of a Greek
phrase meaning "long by convention." Both, however, misleadingly imply
that some how a short vowel becomes ling - which is a nonsense.

It is very important to distinguish the related but different concepts
of vocalic length and syllabic quantity.
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Dirk Elzinga wrote:
 > Andreas:
 >
 > It seems to be a perfectly reasonable stress pattern. In most versions of
 > stress theory, the final consonant or syllable *can* be ignored (or
rendered
 > "extrametrical" to use the technical term) for the purposes of reckoning
 > stress. You mentioned Latin -- Latin is a good example of final syllable
 > extrametricality: its description is something like "Stress the
penult if it
 > is heavy; else stress the antepenult."

Not 'something like' - that is precisely what it is    :)

 >Notice that the final syllable never comes into it.

Indeed it does not.

--
Ray
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