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From: reilly@iuvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Syllabic Sibilants
Message-ID: <7100024@iuvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Dec-85 01:15:00 EST
Article-I.D.: iuvax.7100024
Posted: Sun Dec  8 01:15:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Dec-85 06:22:10 EST
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Nf-From: iuvax!reilly    Dec  8 01:15:00 1985



Sure, I have lots to say on all these things.
Frequencies can tell you lots of things.  First, they'll tell
you that onsets (beginnings of syllbales) differ vastly from
codas.  consonantal clusters in onsets are constrained to differ
MORE in sonority than codas.  This is why you find neither pf-
nor fp- frequently in languages.  And when you DO have sounds
like tsh and dzh in English, they are called "affricates".  This means
that the timing of these events are different (an old debate:  do
you have one or two segments) and no phonologist in the world is
going to give you a theory of timing.  you're going to have to get
more phonetic to investigate that angle.  Notice that sk- sp- and
st- do form a sizable enough contrast along the scale of sonority,
just as mpa- does with nasal homoganics, even thought the sonority
is increasing the "wrong" way.  Nasals involve a very slow, temporally
imprecise gesture (the velum), and are more common, i bet, in codas
where languages in questions have consonanatal codas (a lot don't--
English is VERY exotic in its wealth of consonantal clusters in codas.)
	You can further see things just by looking at the list
of permitted clusters in onsets and comparing them to permissible
codas in English.  The permissible codas far outnumber the onsets.
Why should this be so, unless onsets are more constrained by principles
than codas?   And yet it is well know that the distribution of features
is more random (informative) at the beginning of  words (& therefore
onsets) than the ends of words (and therefore codas).  So you have
a seeming paradox.  If you are interested, i can send you a copy of
the paper i presented to the lsa last christmas which deals with 
precisely these issues (and to boot, shows how Selkirk's ideas fit
in).  It is on file, i can send you a copy.

will reilly
linguistics, IU