THEORY: ambisyllabicity & gemmination (was: final features,moras, and roots)

Raymond Brown wrote:
> Also, is the /p/ in English _happy_ really ambisyllabic?  The argument, as
> I understand it, is that the lax vowels (/@/, /E/, /I/, /O/ and /U/) never
> occur in word final position, therefore they do not occur in syllable final
> position.
Depends on dialect, I suppose.  For me, it's pretty clearly
ambisyllabic, or at least belonging to the previous vowel (also I use
/&/, not /@/).  Before a voiceless consonant, vowels are shorter than
before a voiced consonant or in an open syllable, for example, _crap_
and _crab_ are [kr_0&p] and [kr_0&:b], while _crappy_ and _crabby_ are
['kr_0&pi] and ['kr_0&:bi], clearly the vowel's length behaves as if [p]
is part of the same syllable.

In fact, my question would be whether it has any connection with the
*following* one.  It's not *['kr_0&p_hi], the /p/ seems to behave solely
as a coda in such words.

(I changed the example in order to show a minimal pair)

Of course, all of what I said is describing *my* dialect, perhaps in
yours it isn't, while in mine it is.

> In other words I do not find the argumernt that the lax vowels /@/, /E/,
> /I/, /O/ and /U/
/@/ can clearly occur in open syllables, but the others, in my dialect,
can't.

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