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

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> > > I think you misunderstood my question.  What I meant was, would a
> > > knowledge of the language's structure allow you to predict whether
> > > _kasta_ would be two or three morae?  In other words, would a speaker of
> > > this language know whether it would be two or three morae?
> >
> > Oh, well, you didn't say that a speaker's intuitions are being called into
> > play. I thought (based on what you wrote) that you were asking whether
> > someone sitting outside the system, so to speak, analyzing the language
> > from a theoretical point of view, would be able to predict the moraicity
> > I would still say "no", however, because first of all, moraicity is a theoretical
> > construct, and is not something that you can just sense with a native speaker's
> > intuition:  it needs to be there to explain the data, but that is sensed only after
> > much analysis of the language.
>
> I am inclined to disagree with you here, at least on such scanty evidence.
> Many languages around the world have mora-based poetry, Japanese being the
> most obvious one to me. Saying that morae are not available to native
> intuition makes me wonder how mora-sensitive poetry can be constructed
> without rigorous analysis of the language.
>
> Syllables are also theoretical constructs, yet people can break a word
> into syllables without any training. My Pima consultant started doing this
> spontaneously, for example. He even deleted very salient epenthetic
> segments. As an illustration, he broke up [Tok@Dot] 'spider' as [Tok
> .Dot], and [komkIdZ1t] 'tortoise' as [komk. dZ1t]. (This epenthesis is
> subject to a regular phonological rule, it is not simply phonetics.)
But see, I'm not sure that that's really a certain guide, since even
educated English speakers do not always agree on the syllabification
of English words they use everyday.  Furthermore, even assuming that they
are like your informant, could most untrained educated English speakers
*predict* how underlying forms work themselves into syllables? Can they
*predict*, even in informal terms, based on some kind of generalization,
what kinds of onsets and onset clusters and what kinds of codas and coda
clusters are allowed in the speech that they use everyday (that is, without
being asked about each possible onset or coda cluster individually)?  That's
the problem:  that even when you grant that they can parse words into
syllables, can they say *why* those syllbles end up the way they do?
I would so "no", unless they are (a) some kind of linguistic genius, or
(b) trained in linguistic theory.  Nik's post used the word "predict", and I
took that as the salient responding point.  "Predict", to me, implies something
significantly more sophisticated than the ability to parse words into syllables,
and thus the ability to look a level below that at the moraic constituents.

===================================
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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