🚀 go-pugleaf

Zvi Gilbert writes:
>>
>>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.  
>
>Well.  I think that your characterization is a mite unfair.  I'm not going
>to talk about extrametricality in this post, but it is a widely attested 
>characterization of certain phonotactic facts.

Maybe.  Looks more to me like a widely utilized notational device meant to
cover situations where a strict metrical scheme doesn't work out the way
we want it to.

>First look at the facts: "extra" is syllabified as TWO syllables in English.
>[ek.stra]; there's no doubt that that is the case.

It often happens that I'm unsure about where to place a syllable division
in English.  I think that syllabification, like the alphabetic principle,
is something that is, in large part, learned.  I also note that (at least
in the languages I work with) anything you put in terms of some purported
syllable structure can always be rephrased without reference to groupings
of this kind.

Again, though, my training is as a philologist, and have to emphasize that
my inability to see what syllabic phonology gains us (at least in most cases)
may simply be due to my fundamentally different mind-set (very structuralist;
at times even neogrammarian).

>So lets be clear what we're talking about.  The FACTS of syllabification
>are not in doubt.  The explanation for why segments syllabify the way that
>they do is more complicated than just saying, "The sonority hierarchy gets
>everything"; there are other factors (phonotactics and the like) that are 
>involved.

This definition of phonotactics looks to me like an escape.  If the syllabi-
fication algorithms we're using don't work, then let's just say that certain
sounds have to group certain ways, and that these necessary sequencing con-
straints override syllabification.  Perhaps it's just me, but this sounds
like mere taxonomy used to cover up an inadequate system.

>>I'd really hoped that somebody would discuss the objective evidence that
>>syllables, in fact, exist before giving everything names.  Despite the
>>rush of work in syllabic and metrical phonology, there still appear to be
>>a lot of phonologists who don't accept the notion of a deep-structure
>>syllable.  
>
>I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "deep structure syllable."

I use that term loosely.  The question I'm after is just how abstract a
level we can go to and still find syllables as basic structural units.  The
lexicon itself?  The lexical phonological rules?  Post-lexical?

>deep structure is a syntactic term... the generative phonology tradition in 
>which I work doesn't have syllables at the underlying level in the phonology
>(at least in English); syllabification happens at the level of lexical 
>phonology.

I see. 

You've actually been a big help.  What I was looking for was really un-
attainable.  I tend to want to know what linguistic theory can do for my
practical analyses of data.  Theory changes from year to year, and it's
quite difficult for a philologist to keep up on everything that is hap-
pening.

You have my apologies if my questions and responses seem hopelessly ig-
norant.

-- 

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