🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct31.162453.23536@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <1cu7rtINN8t4@uwm.edu> hahn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>>> 
>>> This is one of those facts about syllabification in English and many other 
>>> languages; /s/ can do many things that are not permitted to any other 
>>> consonants.  It violates the sonority hierarchy all the time, in words like
>>> "extra" and "straw" (three sonority peaks, but clearly only two syllables)...
>> 
>>Some consider these to be one sound, i.e. /st/ or /sp/,  and some  
>>say  that they are extrasyllabic, thus not part of the delinquent sonority
>>peaks.
>
>I've always love the terms "extrametrical" and "extrasyllabic."  Let me
>translate:  We don't know what the hell to do with them, but we'll tack
>them on somehow or other.  What I'd like to know is whether the extramet-
>rical objects are rigidly defined by the system, so that their presence
>is predictable and systematically accounted for.  Sometimes I just get
>the gut feeling that they're a kludge.  Stick 'em in when things don't
>otherwise work out.  This makes them mere notational add-ons, without any
>legitimate predictive power - testimonials to the fact that human speech
>on the deep structure level (if such a thing exists) does not conform to
>metrical theory (fully).

You're right they're things we don't really know what to do with, but
extra-prosodicity isn't entirely unconstrained -- we know it only
seems to happen at edges of domains, for example (and weird behaviour
of s is no exception here) so there's at least a direction to push the
research in  (I think Sharon Inkelas has done some work on this, but I
don't recall the details.)  If we had to explain everything at once we
might never get anything done.  It's not as if phonologists don't
recognise extraprosodicity as a problem to be solved.


>   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
>   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer

Alan

-- 
Alan Munn                     <amunn@gibbs.oit.unc.edu>
Dept. of Linguistics, CB# 3155 UNC Chapel Hill NC 27599