Re: Partially-heard words. (or phrases?)
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, July 14, 2008, 11:32 |
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On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 21:43, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
> Are there any natlangs in which, by hearing the last part of a word, you can
> get an idea how long the first (unheard) part was?
>
> Are there any natlangs in which, by hearing the first part of a word, you can
> get an idea how long the last (unheard) part was?
In languages with fixed, penultimate stress (e.g. Lojban - except for
proper nouns - or, I'm told, Polish), hearing a word that ends in a
stressed syllable means you missed the last syllable. But that only
helps you if you've heard most of the word (e.g. the first ten
syllables of an eleven-syllable word; hearing only the first nine
syllables would not help you in that case). So this can only tell you
if you've missed exactly one syllable.
For words which have different inventories of syllable-final and
word-final phoneme( cluster)s, hearing a word ending in an invalid
word-final phoneme means you missed at least one syllable at the end;
similarly with syllable-initial and word-initial phoneme( cluster)s
and knowing you've missed at least one syllable at the beginning. So
these can only tell you you've missed at least one syllable, but not
how many.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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