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

From:tristan alexander mcleay <zsau@...>
Date:Saturday, July 14, 2001, 7:22
Muke Tever wrote:

 >>===== Original Message From Constructed Languages List
 >>Mangiat sikayal:
 >>
 >>>I tend to see English syllabification as a sort of a nightmare. 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... so I've grown up without knowing how Englishmen actually
 >>>break up words. Italian syllabification, OTOH, is really simple.
 >>>
 >>Actually, if you're just trying to hyphenate words properly, it's not too
 >>difficult.  The rules are:
 >>
 >>1. Don't leave fewer than 3 letters hanging before or after the hyphen
 >>2. Break words across obvious morphemic boundaries
 >>3. Otherwise, any VCV is broken V-CV
 >>4. Any VCCV --> VC-CV
 >>5. Any VCCCV --> VC-CCV
 >>
 >
 >Huh.  When I learned it we also had a rule not to hyphenate if the fragment of
 >a word could be interpreted as a different word (especially since to someone
 >reading out loud they could end up starting out the wrong word entirely).
 >
The only thing I ever learnt about hyphenation was NEVER EVER EVER
HYPHANATE WORDS!!!. Not that I had, but others in our class had. I think
i was in grade 3 or 4 at the time. Nowadays, I just use LaTeX[1], and
tell it to hyphanate according to the rules of british english, whatever
those are (presumably there aren't any differences, but it just needs to
know thinks like words spelt 'encyclopaedia' or 'inflexion' or whatever.

Tristan

[1] GUI? Meh. I was born a decade or so late for my UI preferences, so I
use Linux and LaTeX and (X)HTML and vim[2] and all sorts of other weird
things that scare my mother half to death, except when I'm using the
family computer, and until I can get me some good drivers for my
soundcard. Although my first computer was an XT and the first WP I used
was WordPerfect 5.1, so maybe I'm the one who doesn't like change.
[2] I still haven't got the hang of Emacs

Reply

John Cowan <jcowan@...>