Re: English syllable structure

Hmm? /tl/ potlatch... shuttling... hope you haven't caught my "failing to
engage brain before putting mouth in gear" tendency - for which I apologise.
It's just enthusiasm really!
Mike.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fabian" <fabian@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 8:54 PM
Subject: Re: English syllable structure


> > In a later post, Cheng Zhong claimed that since English have about
> twenty
> > consonants and twenty vowels, it follows that it has 400 phonetic
> types -
> > he seems to be of the opinion that everything really is CV syllables
> > (which'd make "scratched" a word of five syllables or so).
>
> My Jeyn script that I invented (html lost in a pc crash alas) attempted to
> codify English syllables. Essentially, each glyph constituted a valid
> consonant cluster or a valid vowel cluster as defined within English
> phonosyntactics. English is essentially (C)C(C)V(V)(V)(C)(C)(C) in
> syllable structure. But there are more restrictions.
>
>
> C1: s, S (voiced to match C2)
>
> C2: any except N
>
> C3: w, l, r, y
>
> Vowels: There are essentially 20-25 different vowels in English, depending
> on dialect, counting diphtongs and triphthongs as well.
>
> C4: w, l, r, y, [nasal]
>
> C5: any except h
>
> C6: s, t (voiced to match C5)
>
> There are numerous restrictions on what exactly is valid (/tl/ is right
> out forex), and doubtless there are some things not adequately covered by
> this summary, but this covers nearly every case.
>
> --
> Fabian
> Teach a man what to think, and he'll think as long as you watch him. Teach
> a man how to think, and he'll think you're playing mind games.

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