🚀 go-pugleaf

Matti:

I don't understand a lot of the things that you said.  I am a student of
phonology, and I'd like to put my $0.02 in.

linnan@zelda.cs.hut.fi (Matti Linnanvuori) writes:
>hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
>>What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a string of
>>letters to constitute a syllable ?
>>Is the existence of a vowel a necessary condition ? Is it sufficient ?
>>Is there a consistent definition across languages ?
>
>  In English e.g. a prefix or a suffix forms a syllable of its own. In
>written Finnish, only the letter clusters count.

This makes no sense. There are many prefixes and suffixes in English that 
attach to words, and then resyllabify:

e.g., write + er [rajt] --> writer [raj.ter]
      sand + y          --> sandy [san.di]
      in + active       --> inactive [i.nak.tIv] or [in.nak.tIv]

So it is not true that prefixes and suffixes in English form syllables on 
their own.  After they attach, they become part of the phonological word, 
and become part of preceding or following syllables under the principles
of syllabification.

I have no idea what "only the letter clusters count" means.

>  In Finnish, every syllable contains a vowel, a double vowel or diphthong.

Check.  Does Finnish permit sonorants like /l/ and /n/ to head a syllable?

>The adjacent vowels created by the deletion of 'k' do not form a diphthong.

Okay.  That's fine.  (Except that the 'k' has no referent since you haven't
given any examples.)

>  The consonants are assigned a syllable like this: V-CV, VC-CV, VCC-C.
                                                     ^^^^   ^^^^  ^^^^^
                                                     Fine   Fine   ????
That last one seems to have no vowel.  What does that structure mean?

>  Because of these simple rules, syllabilization occurs in written Finnish
>much more often than in English.

This makes no sense either.  Syllabification happens to ALL segments in ALL 
languages, all the time.  It can't happen *more* in one language than another;
languages differ in what they permit in any syllable, what they allow as its
head, and what strategies they use to correct structures that violate per-
missible syllables in that language.

And "written Finnish"?  I really don't understand.

--Zvi
Phonologist-in-training at UMass, Amherst