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

At 1:00 pm -0400 4/10/00, Togonakamane@AOL.COM wrote:
[....]
>yeah, exactly. sung Japanese is much more precise about saying all the
>morae-- because the singing isn't so much about syllables, as it is about
>beats/timing. In very careful speech, or singing, the word "shinjiteru" (to
>believe in [a person]) is treated as "shi-n-ji-te-ru"... you hear the morae.
But that, surely, is treating the thing as _syllables_, not morae. As I
understand it, mora is used as a unit of metrical time (or weight) in those
languages which distinguish heavy & light syllables (I think some
distinguish heavy, medium & light syllables).

In the Japanese example above the implication as far as I can see is that
in very careful speech or singing we have five syllables.

In Classical Latin (and the term originated in describing ancient Greek &
Classical Latin prosody), e.g.

syllables: ar-ma ui-rum-que ca-no:
    morae: 2  1  1   2   1   1  2

This has exactly seven syllables and exactly ten morae whether you speak
very carefully, sing it, or just speak it 'normally'.   You cannot, e.g.
split the two morae of _ar_ into two 'syllables' *"a-r" nor the two morae
of _no:_ into *"no-o".  I don't understand the distinction between careful
speech, singing and 'normal' sppech in this context.

>in normal speech, you hear it as "shin-ji-te-ru", the syllables instead.
This looks to me like the difference between formal speech and what Mark
Line used to refer to as "allegro speech".  For example, in Brit English
_primarily_ has four syllables in formal speech /'prajm@rIli/ but only
three syllables in 'normal' or 'allegro' speech /'prajmrIli/.

As far I can see, all that's being said is that in formal speech we have
five syllables shi-n-ji-te-ru, whereas in allegro speech we have only four
sylllables shin-ji-te-ru.  Or have I missed something, somwhere?

[...]
>treated in formal linguistics), never actual syallables. Sorry if my language
>was less than precise,
Don't worry - I'm just trying to make sense of what you're trying to say
about Japanese.

>my Japanese teachers were more concerned with getting
>across that you had to count morae than with the exact distinction between
>mora and syllable,
Maybe your Japanese teachers should be on the list to explain - they seem
to have caused some confusion somewhere, as far as I can see ;)

>and my linguistics terminology is thin in general, so I
>tend to babble semi-correctly when I know anything at all in hopes of Saying
>Something Useful
OK - I'm not getting at you personally.  I'm just trying to understand
what's going on or what your Japanese teachers are trying to say.  And,
hopefully, by arguing around the matter Something Uself, as you say, may
come out of it   :)

Hopefully, Dirk & Markus might help us out   ;)

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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