Re: THEORY: final features, moras, and roots [was: it's what I do]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> After skimming over this thread about moras and roots, it *finally*
> clicked in my mind. Now I'm all worked up and want to know more about the
> theory behind this stuff.
>
> Any online references that I can quickly skim over? I'm a bit hesitant to
> ask for book references 'cos I have very scant linguistic background and
> am loathe to buy an expensive book that uses terminology I can't
> understand.  :-P
Then don't buy; check your local university or college library for the
following:

Hyman, Larry. 1985. _A Theory of Phonological Weight_. Cinnaminson,
NJ: Foris. [This is the first statement of moraic theory within
Generative Grammar; many of the details of Hyman's theory have
undergone revision, but the argumentation is sound.]

Hayes, Bruce. 1989. 'Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology.'
_Linguistic Inquiry_ 15: 33-74. [This is a very nice paper which
argues for a moraic view of syllable structure based on the phenomenon
of compensatory lengthening.]

Hayes, Bruce. 1995. _Metrical Stress Theory_. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [This book is what its title suggests; lots of data
from lots of languages showing that counting moras is the most
efficient way to describe stress systems in the world's languages.]

McCarthy, John and Alan Prince. 1986 (1996). _Prosodic Morphology_. ms
University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Rutgers University.
[This is also available on the Rutgers Optimality Archive:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html. It is the final revision of a paper
which shows that many morphological processes are sensitive to
syllable structure.]

Unfortunately, these are all rather technical (especially the McCarthy
and Prince--it has the virtue, however, of being freely available for
download). I haven't yet found a really clear exposition of this idea
for beginners although it is really quite simple. You might want to
check out Mike Hammond's book on English phonology from Oxford
University Press; his tone is more introductory (although there's
plenty of technical detail for the specialist) and it has the virtue
of being about English. Look especially at pp 40-46 for a general
theory of the syllable.

Dirk

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