Re: Igassik Morphophonology

dirk elzinga sikayal:

> > I suppose `syllables' are something not so easy to define then.
> > Listening to people from Georgia, I decided that the two v, the r and
> > the i make syllables.  So I counted four, thinking the second was
> > stressed: v-'prts-kv-ni.
> >
> > But I don't know whether that's accepted theory.  It was what I heard
> > and how I could pronounce the word so that people said: `Yes,
> > right.'. :-)
>
> This is an interesting question, and one which different natural
> languages handle differently. In Berber, for example, there are
> no restrictions on letting obstruents (stops, fricatives,
> affricates) be syllabic (or at least, very few restrictions), so
> syllable structure is rather simple. Here are some examples
> (syllable peaks are in capitals):
>
>         .rA.tK.tI.  'she will remember'
>         .bD.dL.     'exchange!'
>         .tF.tKt.    'you suffered a sprain'
>         .tzMt.      'it (f) is stifling'
>         .tR.gLt.    'you have locked'
>
>         etc
I didn't think that stops could be syllable peaks.  It seems impossible to
me, since it's impossible to prolong the articulation of a stop and still
have it be stop-like.  Unless, of course, the symbols above are actually
fricatives.


> (snip fascinating and impronounceable examples)
>
> My impression from the literature is that syllabification in
> Georgian is actually more like Bella Coola than like Berber;
> i.e., consonants pile up into clusters to avoid being made
> syllable nuclei. So the form you cite above would be a single
> phonological syllable, since there is only one segment which is
> eligible to be a syllable nucleus (/i/). How it is actually
> articulated is another matter; even the most nimble tongue will
> have transitional spaces between consonants which will sound
> like vowels.
Is the idea of "phonological syllable" even valid?  I've always thought of
syllables as a feature of phonetics and articulatory factors.

>
> Dirk
>
> --
> Dirk Elzinga
> dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
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