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From: michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Double 'R'
Message-ID: <381@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Nov-85 12:03:08 EST
Article-I.D.: bcsaic.381
Posted: Tue Nov 19 12:03:08 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Nov-85 05:42:10 EST
References: <2176@brl-tgr.UUCP> <7100021@iuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 30
Summary: 

In article <7100021@iuvax.UUCP> reilly@iuvax.UUCP writes:
>...sounds like /s/, of which we can
>say with confidence that it has certain phonetic properties
>(energy concentrated above 4000 Hz) and certain phonological
>ones (is syllabic if any fricatives within a langauge are syllabic).
       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I'm glad someone brought this up.  Hooper (in her book "Natural
Generative Phonology") also claimed that [s] was syllabic in English but
not in Spanish.  As far as I could tell the reason was so she could save
the syllable structure theory she had, which said that there was a
strict succession from non-syllabic sounds at the periphery of a syllable
to syllabic sounds in the core.  English words like "spy" were
a problem for her theory unless such a word was syllabified (sp?) 
[s-pit].  Spanish, on the other hand, has no such words (a word
which "would" begin with s + C has an "e" tacked on the beginning), hence
there is no reason to claim that [s] is syllabic in Spanish.  Being a
native speaker of English, and having fairly good pronunciation in
Spanish, I never saw this; [s] seems nearly identical in the two
languages (possibly a bit more dental in Spanish, and tending to be
pronounced a bit more lenis).  It certainly doesn't *feel* more syllabic 
in English, for whatever that's worth.

So what is the evidence for "s" being syllabic in English, other than
that it makes someone's theory of syllables work better?


-- 
Mike Maxwell
Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center
	...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm