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Re: English syllable structure

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Thursday, December 6, 2001, 20:53
Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

> Thomas R. Wier wrote: > > >>>Since English has only /b p m k g N/ as non-alveolar consonants, > >>> > >>what about /f v w/ ? > > > > Or indeed also /T D S Z W/ > > > T D S Z are definitely coronal, if not perfectly alveolar.
True.
> What is W?
I may have forgotten my ASCII-IPA, but I was under the impression that it was voiceless /w/.
> > [Jumping into conversation:] Are we talking about coda clusters, > > or onset clusters? What about [pS] as in <pshaw>? > > Coda. Dirk said that non-alveolar clusters can't be preceded by > long vowels/diphthongs in English; I said there were only a few > such clusters.
Ah, that clarifies things.
> And the traditional pronunciation of "pshaw" is /SO/ ~ /SA/ ~ /SQ/.
That's odd. It's an interjection, and presumably a nonce-formation. Why would the <p> be there if there were not at least some speakers historically who pronounced a /p/*? I pronounce the /p/, on those rare occasions that I use it, because I picked it up from others who did the same. *(Well, weirder things have happened in English spelling.) ===================================================================== Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier> "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n / Dept. of Linguistics mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..." University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought / 1010 E. 59th Street and not complete one road that has no turn" Chicago, IL 60637 Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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John Cowan <jcowan@...>