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Grammatical Phenomena
The brief survey below refers to a few examples in the literature where the syllable has been invoked to explain linguistically significant generalizations. Can the syllable be dispensed with in these and other cases without loss of descriptive or explanatory adequacy? If not, how much internal structure is required?
Reduplication. Jason Haugen argued in his talk at the conference that the syllable is a delimiter for reduplication. Can a theory of the nonsyllable offer as good an account of his facts?
Allomorphy. Vaux (Bert Vaux 1998. The phonology of Armenian. Oxford: Clarendon Press) argues that some dialects of Armenian choose the plural allomorph depending on whether or not the base is greater than one syllable.
Phonotactics. Pat Shaw argued that the notion of the syllable is not relevant (and therefore otiose) to describing consonant clusters in Salish languages. However, Toni Borowsky (Toni Borowsky 1989 “Structure preservation and the syllable coda in English” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7:145-166.) has argued that the word internal phonotactics of English words is best explained by reference to a maximal CVX theory of syllable structure. Kenstowicz’s text (chapter 6) contains several examples where the syllable is invoked to explain phonotactics.
Distribution of allophones. Can Kahn’s (Daniel Kahn 1976 Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Ph.D. dissertation. Distributed by the Indiana University Linguistics Club.) is classic – can this be analyzed better – or at least as well – in a theory without any reference to syllable structure? Coetzee’s talk “Allophonic cues to syllabification” is also relevant to this point.
Compensatory lengthening. Paul Kiparsky’s talk on compensatory lengthening in Finnish clearly makes reference to the syllable, as do most other references to compensatory lengthening in the phonological literature.
Assimilation. The syllable is not usually thought of as necessary to accounts of assimilation; Ranjan Sen argued that it is not necessary (and therefore otiose) in accounting for diachronic processes in Romance.
Stress. The distinction between light and heavy syllables is obviously crucial for determining word stress in many languages.
Epenthesis and deletion. Syllable based generalizations about epenthesis and deletion (especially vowels and consonants, respectively) abound in the literature, especially since Itô (Itô, Junko 1989. “A prosodic theory of epenthesis.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 7.217-59.) It’s hard to see how these elegant generalizations can be captured in a theory that has no syllables at all.
A significant portion of the phonological grammar of a language. Paul Kiparsky mentioned in the Friday Discussion that Panini managed an account of Sanskrit without the syllable, as did Chomsky and Halle in SPE. It is important that any theoretical construct in phonology get beyond what Idsardi (at dinner after the Friday Discussion) referred to as “helicopter linguistics,” where a few small examples – equivalent to pedagogical problem sets – are use to justify a theoretical innovation. Paul also mentioned this problem in reference to the current state of OT.
Typological generalizations. By this is meant, for example, the well known generalizations to the effect that word initial sequences seem to follow universal implicational laws. Clements (in press) has interesting comments on this.
Where did the idea of the syllable arise in generative phonology in the first place? Paul Kilparsky describes the origins of the syllable in generative phonology in the Fall of 1966.
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| pzioga | the syllable as a locus for tonal generalizations | 6 | Mar 24 2008, 1:39 PM EDT by ulfsbjorninn | ||
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Thread started: Feb 15 2008, 3:31 PM EST
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The discussion of Hakha Lai by Hyman and VanBik makes crucial reference to "syllable" in stating generalizations about where we find tonal contrasts. E.g., F, R, and L tones contrast only in so called smooth syllables (bimoraic syllables which end in a vowel or sonorant). Monomoraic sylables do not bear tone and so called stopped-syllables ending in voiceless stops or glottalized sonorants do not behave like smooth syllables. However, words are largely monosyllabic in this language, so syllable and word appear to cover the same descriptive ground in this language.
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| cecairns | The syllable as a locus for deletion | 0 | Feb 3 2008, 3:50 PM EST by cecairns | ||
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Thread started: Feb 3 2008, 3:50 PM EST
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It isn’t always clear what role the syllable plays in regards to deletion; for example, although consonant deletion in Finnish seems teleologically motivated to ensure proper syllabification, it is not the unsyllabified consonant that deletes. E.g., in lapsi ‘child, nom. sg.’, lasta ‘child, part. sg.’ the first of three consonants drops, which is presumably not syllabified. Similarly, the first of two word final consonants drop: paistos ‘pie, nom. sg.’, paistoksen ‘pie, gen. sg.’ This phenomenon can be captured with a nonsyllabic rule that refers to the following environment: ___C{C, #}, but this was recognized as a loss of generalization more than three decades ago.
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