Talk:Syllable

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Contents 1 remove belittled 2 suggestions 3 syllable-less language? 4 sixths 5 Latin stress 6 Parsed into zero syllables 7 external references

[edit] remove belittled

I removed belittled from the examples of syllables that end with three or four consonants. Dictionary.com says it's be-lit-tled. I substituted strength, which is one syllable. —Triskaideka 15:20, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

sixths ends with four letters, but it does not contain 4 separate sounds (as english orthography and phonetics do not match up), and should be removed from the list of four-consonant-endings.

Funnily enough it does contain four sounds (k s th s), but not divided the same way as the letters. −Woodstone 16:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] suggestions

Suggestions:

• discuss moras
• light vs. heavy vs. super-heavy syllables
• maybe discuss feet?
• discuss difficulty of defining the term syllable
• mention older definitions (like "chest pulses", etc.)
• add diagram of syllable tree
• how to determine syllable boundaries

- Ish ishwar 18:57, 2005 Jan 28 (UTC)

[edit] syllable-less language?

I don't know about Bella Coola, but is the given sentence really syllable-less? It seems to me it uses the velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ] as nuclei, exactly like the second syllable of the English word bottle. It is written with ł (&#322), but maybe it's actually ɫ (ɫ). They look so similar it's no wonder there's a confusion. - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:10, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi.

No, the Salishan language family and other languages spoken on the northwest coast of North America have words with no sonorants. The Salishan family is generally the most well-known. These languages challenge the notions of syllable.

Bella Coola (a.k.a. Nuxálk) has, I think, the longest known word in any language that consists only of obstruents. It is often quoted in publications. Which is why I wrote it. (to be dramatic!)

The word xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ he had had a bunchberry plant in the article is written in Americanist phonetic transcription which is standard for Native American work (IPA being a British(-European) practice). This is the way it is written in the article that I referenced and is probably very similar to the way native speakers write it (assuming, of course, that they write it at all). The other examples in the article are written in standard orthographies as well. An IPA phonetic transcription would be this: [xɬp’χʷɬtɬpɬːskʷʦ’].

Here are some more Bella Coola words for you:

• [ps] 'shape, mold'
• [p’s] 'bend'
• [p’χʷɬt] 'bunchberry'
• [ʦktskʷʦ] 'he arrived'
• [tʦ] 'little boy'
• [skʷp] 'saliva'
• [sps] 'northeast wind'
• [tɬ’p] 'cut with scissors'
• [sʦ’q] 'animal fat'
• [sʦ’qʦtx] 'that's my animal fat over there'
• [tɬ] 'strong'
• [q’t] 'go to shore'
• [qʷt] 'crooked'

You see similar things in the unrelated Wakashan language, Oowekyala (also on northeastern coast):

• [k’ʷs] 'light'
• [qʷsqʷs] 'low mountain blueberry (a.k.a. dwarf blueberry)'
• [ʦ’ɬʦ’kʷ] 'short (plural)'

Here is a word from Klallam, another coastal Salishan language (which is not as extreme as Bella Coola):

• [n̰ʃxʷʧʰɬːq’ʧʰʃɬʃáʔ] 'fifty of them got you'

This Klallam word has two voiced sonorants with 10 phonemic obstruents between them: /ʃ + xʷ + tʃ + ɬ + ɬ + q’ + tʃ + ʃ + ɬ + ʃ/. Where is the division between the 2 syllables? Is it possible to find one?

What about Bella Coola [p’χʷɬt] bunchberry? Does this have no syllables or 4 syllables? One solution is to perhaps treat voiceless fricatives as syllable nuclei. Then [s̩.ps̩] northeast wind would have 2 syllables with syllabic fricatives. But that still leaves [q’t] go to shore.

The Salishan languages are very interesting and pose difficult challenges to linguistic analysis. (Another issue is that it is often claimed that they have no difference between nouns & verbs, so nouns must not be linguistic universals). Sadly, most are severely endangered.

- Ish ishwar 06:40, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

References:

• Bach, Emmon; Howe, Darin; & Shaw, Patricia A. (2005). On epenthesis and moraicity in Northern Wakashan. (Paper presented at the 2005 SSILA conference in Oakland, CA).
• Clark, John; & Yallop, Colin. (1995). An introduction to phonetics and phonology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Montler, Timothy. (2004-2005). (Handouts on Salishan language family).

Thank you very much. It's so interesting to know such exotic languages. - TAKASUGI Shinji 00:04, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

According to syllable@Everything2.com, the Bella Coola word stt has three syllables. See also lateral fricative@Everything2.com, the writer says "you get the glorious hexasyllabic word nujamƛƛƛƛ 'we used to sing'." Isn't it possible to define syllables in Bella Coola? - TAKASUGI Shinji 01:19, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I dont know about that site. They cite references from one secondary source. I suggest that you read the article by Bagemihl if you want to investigate this. Bagemihl gets his data from this grammar:

• Nater, Hank F. (1984). The Bella Coola language. Mercury series; Canadian ethonology service (No. 92). Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.

The real situation is that everyone is trying to figure out how to fit these languages into linguistic theory. These languages do have vowels and other resonants (vowels are most probably a language universal). So, most would say that, of course, syllables exist.

But the problem is these languages' very high tolerance for sequences of obstruents, as you can see above. The questions they pose are

• What kind of segment can constitute a nucleus? (i.e. only accept resonants? or include obstruents too?)
• How complicated should syllables be? (i.e. only CVC or can we admit CCCCCCVC?)
• Should all segments be parsed into syllable structures or can some segments at syllable margins be allowed to remain stray segments?

So, to answer your question: Yes, it is possible to define syllables in Bella Coola. But, what constitutes a syllable will depend on your phonological analysis, as will whether or not the above quoted words have syllables (and if so, how many). Be assured that a good number of people are working on these issues. Peace. - Ish ishwar 06:13, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

Thanks. I came accross that site when I was looking for another thing, and I just wanted to check the information written there. I don't know about those languages, as I have written. Why don't you add information on Bella Coola syllables in the article?

By the way, thank you for reverting my deletion of [dl] in affricate consonant. I didn't know the same symbol is used for different sounds. - TAKASUGI Shinji 06:44, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I didnt know that either. I have never seen that symbol refer to a lateral fricative (in fact, I wonder if it is the IPA's error). That symbol is very commonly used in Americanist phonetic transcription to represent a lateral affricate. I think the symbol was first suggested for general use in 1934 in an article in American Anthropologist. The authors of this article say that the symbol was used before to transcribe Eskimo languages in as early as 1928. (By the way, I really dont like the way affricates are transcribed in IPA in they dont adhere to the "one sound = one letter" principle). - Ish ishwar 07:36, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

[edit] sixths

Does "sixths" really count as a syllable that ends in four consonant phonemes? It's nearly impossible to say 'ksths'. "Prompts", the other example given in the article, is a little easier, but still no one actually fully pronounces the "mpts" when they say the word. Maybe "contexts" would be a better example. Actually, scratch that, no one completely pronounces "ksts" either. I think it's fair to say that English phonlology only allows three consonant sounds in a syllable coda. Morphology may create impossible syllables, but those are simplified when used in spoken English.

Certainly in fast speech, complex codas get simplified, but many people have no trouble pronouncing the full codas of sixths, prompts, and contexts in citation form. It's a bit of a stretch to assert that the full coda completely lacks the sounds that get simplified, when there are plenty of people who do pronounce them. There are probably many people who do reduce the codas even in citation form, so what we have is an example of idiolectical variation. Nohat 17:55, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Latin stress

Stress in Latin is determined by syllable length, with no distiction between syllables having one or more coda(e) and syllables just having a long nucleus. E.g. laudāre and monēre are both stressed on the last but one syllable, even though both -dā- and -nē- have no coda. --FAeR 16:16, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually stress in Latin is determined by syllable weight (mora count). See Dreimorengesetz. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 18:28, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, my explanation is just a less erudite, but equivalent version, I guess :) --FAeR 30 June 2005 14:30 (UTC)

[edit] Parsed into zero syllables

What the hell is "parsed into 0 syllables" supposed to mean? You can't divide a thing into zero parts. If you refuse to divide something, you have one part, non zero. I corrected that, but Ish ishwar reverted that. --Army1987 09:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

means it has no syllables. – ishwar  (speak) 09:42, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

Just to be clear, what Ish means is that the theory that parses the word into 0 syllables is denying the existence of syllables at all (for this language at least). Under such a paradigm, it makes perfect sense to say something has 0 syllables, just as you would say a bunch of bananas can be parsed into 0 apples. Nohat 16:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

"is denying the existence of syllables at all (for this language at least)." It's not, it's simply denying their universal application (ie, that all words can be fully parsed into syllables). If you read up more on Bella Coola, for example, you'll find that many processes like reduplication provide evidence for the existence of syllables in Bella Coola, but the language does not require words to be fully (or even partially) parsed into syllables. Basically, any sonorant can serve as a syllabic nucleus (and indeed if a word contains sonorants it must contain at least one syllable), and the maximal syllable is, IIRC, CVC. When a word has no sonorants, none of it is parsed into syllables. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.7.19.42 (talk • contribs) 20:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

What's relevant of course is whether syllables are meaningful to speakers of these languages. To my ears, these words do sound like they are fully syllabified. Sequences of voiced plosives are separated by epenthetic schwas, and sequences of voiceless plosives are separated by (epenthetic?) aspiration. I suppose we could argue that the epenthetic vowels and aspiration function as syllabic nuclei, and that in a word like sxs the middle fricative is a nucleus. Either that or syllables are a meaningless concept in these words. Either way, long sequences of stops do not form syllables. kwami 01:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem with that analysis for Salishan languages (claiming that stops without a following sonorant, for instance, are basically syllables and thus all words are fully syllabified), is that it makes the analysis of processes like reduplication that are easily explainable in the alternative analysis, which has moraically licenced extra-syllabic consonants, much more awkward and difficult to explain. By this I mean that in the analysis with extra syllable consonants the rules are generally straight-forward rules like "reduplicate the first syllable", whereas you have to say something like "reduplicate the first syllable with a vowel or sonorant as its nucleus, and if there is no such syllable then don't reduplicate anything" and much more complicated things to deal with which parts get reduplicated if you make stops and fricatives syllable nuclei. And then there are issues like the placement of stress which aren't often sensitive to the distribution of the extrasyllabic consonants. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.7.19.42 (talk • contribs) 13:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] external references

None of the external references are working, not atleast from my terminal. I suggest some editor, not from IIT Kharagpur, India check if the links are active and accessible. VijitJain 15:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

They all work for me in Berlin, Germany. Angr (talk • contribs) 15:22, 4 April 2006 (UTC)