Re: Moraic codas [was Re: 'Yemls Morphology]

J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > >Actually, syllabification in English seems to be abnormally tricky because
> > >of the problem
> > >of ambisyllabic consonants.  My impression is that in most languages,
> > >speakers have no
> > >trouble at all agreeing on how to syllabify a word.
> >
> > What is an "ambisyllabic consonant"?
>
> This was discussed on the list a while back, so you could look in the archives.
>
> Briefly, an ambisyllabic consonant is a consonant which speakers feel belongs
> to two syllables at the same time.  For example, in the word "happy" /h&pi/,
> English speakers have a hard time deciding if the /p/ belongs to the first
> syllable or the second syllable--in other words, we can't decide if it's
> /h&.pi/ or /h&p.i/.  In a sense it's both.  If you ask an English speaker to
> pronounce the word "happy" one syllable at a time, they will generally prolong
> the /p/ over both syllables ("hap...py"), even though when they speak the word
> normally they don't use a geminate /p/.
>
> I've always assumed that the ambisyllabic effect as a sort of compromise in the
> face of conflicting phonotactic constraints:  Vowels like /&/ can't end in a
> syllable in English, so the /p/ is analyzed as a coda consonant which closes
> off the first syllable in "happy".  However, English also doesn't like a
> syllable beginning with a vowel to come after a syllable ending in a consonant,
> so /p/ gets simultaneously analyzed as the onset of the second syllable in
> "happy".
To me it's curious that that doesn't result in a geminate consonant.  In OT
terms, I suppose you could explain it by saying that you have a constraint
hierarchy like the following:

    *Germinate >> *V[-tense]]_Syl, Onset, >> *Ambisyllabic

(I think;  the last constraint prohibits constructions like *[hæpI] for
me, at any rate)

One of the things I don't like about OT is that this doesn't explain why this
particular ranking should be the case as opposed to others.  But then,
maybe that's something that's not ultimately possible to ascertain, because
we'd need to be there to watch the linguistic change in action. I dunno --
I don't consider myself particularly good at linguistics, even if I like it.

===================================
Thomas Wier | AIM: trwier

"Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi
  entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn;
autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê
  erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos

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