Re: English syllable structure

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

Reply