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

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> Mangiat wrote:
>
> > When I
> > started studying English in the Elementary School we were told to avoid
> > writing a word on two lines because of the problems engendered by
> > syllabification...
>
> Wise advice.
>
> > so I've grown up without knowing how Englishmen actually
> > break up words.
>
> We mostly leave it to trained editors and computer programs, neither
> of which is infallible.  How is a poor program to know that it's
> noth-ing, but ba-thing?
Isn't this recoverable from the pronunciation? <o> in 'nothing'
is lax, but <a> in 'bathing' is tense; if lax vowels may not
occur in open syllables, then the division 'noth-ing' falls out
from that.

> Furthermore, this is yet another of the points
> where British and American disagree: pro-duct vs. prod-uct, e.g.
If the <o> is construed as tense, then 'pro-duct'; if it
construed as lax, then 'prod-uct'.

I would guess that works on English orthography treat this issue
as well.

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir

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