Re: [tied] Consonant-verb regularities

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 4854
Date: 2000-11-25

Welcome, Chris.
 
The syllable structure of Japanese is very rigorously constrained: a consonant that closes a syllable must be identical with the consonant beginning the next syllable, or be a nasal agreeing with the following consonant as to its place of articulation. Only the nasal spelt "n" may occur word-finally. It follows that the only consonant clusters allowed between vowels are sequences like -p.p- or -m.b- (periods mark syllable boundaries), while -p.t-, -s.k- or -r.t- are prohibited:
 
kit.te 'stamp'
gak.koo 'school'
tan.sen 'edge'
tom.bo 'dragonfly'
 
No Japanese syllable may begin (or end) with a cluster (not even in loanwords, hence supootsu = English "sport" with Japanese-style remodelling). But even languages that allow syllable-initial or final sequences of consonants typically impose rather tight constraints on them. In English, for example, a syllable-initial sequence can't contain two obstruents (stops or fricatives) other than st-, sp- or sk-, and an obstruent (or one of these three sequences) may only be followed by a non-obstruent. There are also a number of more specific constraints, and their overall effect is that syllable-initial br-, pl-, skw-, hj-, sm- or tw- are permissible, but tn-, ks-, pt-, mn- (which are OK in Classical Greek, for example) are ruled out.
 
Polish, Russian, and other languages which seem to allow just about anything word-initially, have their own structural limitations. In Polish, for example, a seeming monstrosity like pstr- is permitted (and occurs in several words), whereas ptsr-, sptr- and ptrs- (or any other of the remaining twenty permutations of these four segments) are not allowed even potentially.
 
Well-formedness constraints on syllable structure are arguably universal, though their relative strength is language-specific. For example, all languages "dislike" syllables without an initial consonant, and all languages "dislike" syllable-final consonants, but these constraints do not function as absolute prohibitions unless they happen to dominate all other structural requirements in a given language (in which case we get a language in which all words have one of the shapes CV, CVCV, CVCVCV, etc., while CVC, VC, VCCV, CVVC etc. are banned). A language in which the preference for open syllables and the horror of syllable-initial clusters are both high-ranking will sound like Hawaii.
 
More often constraints manifest their existence as relative preferences. They will be violated very frequently in order to satisfy more important demands, but they may "adjudicate" between competing word shapes that are minimally different, favouring one of them to the exclusion of the other. For example, statements under (1) are not universally true (in fact, they are violated in most languages), but those under (2) are:
 
(1)
... A syllable must begin with a consonant.
... A syllable mustn't begin with two or more consonants.
... A syllable must be open (not closed by a consonant).
 
(2) OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL:
... A syllable with an initial consonant is better formed than one that begins with a vowel.
... A syllable beginning with a single consonant is better formed than one beginning with a cluster.
... An open syllable is better formed than a closed syllable.
 
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: chriscrawford@...
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2000 5:30 PM
Subject: [tied] Consonant-verb regularities

I wonder if you all might indulge a neophyte question. Now, some
languages, such as Russian, have lots of consonant combinations.
Others, such as Hawaiian, use vowels more heavily. Some seem to
insist that every syllable be a consonant followed by a vowel. I
sense
a number of vague patterns here. Are there any regularities in the
relative use of vowels and consonants? Do most languages have some
sort of ironclad rule regarding vowel-consonant relationships? For
example, Japanese, I believe, seems to follow the rule that each
syllable consists of one consonant followed by one vowel -- but there
are a few exceptions, I believe. Do such exceptions tend to follow a
rule?

I suppose that the thrust of my question is, are vowel-consonant
relationships fundamental to a language, and therefore subject to
strict rules, or are they more a matter of local fashion, with lots
of random exceptions?

Thank you for your indulgence.

Chris Crawford