Against ambisyllabicity This is a considerably revised and expanded version of a paper originally presented at the Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto phonology workshop in February 1997 at the University of Toronto. I am grateful for the comments of the audience on that occasion. Margaret Stong-Jensen carefully read through numerous drafts and gave me many important suggestions. I thank Carlos Gussenhoven for providing me with a copy of his 1986 paper and Caroline Smith for a reference for §2. The editors, an anonymous associate editor and several anonymous reviewers for Phonology also provided many critical comments which have helped me to sharpen my ideas in a number of places. Any remaining errors are my own.
Jensen, John T.; Jensen John T.; University of Ottawa
Журнал:
Phonology
Дата:
2000
Аннотация:
Many phonological phenomena require reference to information beyond the immediate context of segments and boundaries. Most commonly, the syllable has been employed as an additional phonological context, but determining the exact nature of syllables and their boundaries has proved notoriously difficult. One approach is to add resyllabification (Selkirk 1982, Borowsky 1986) or ambisyllabification (Kahn 1976, Gussenhoven 1986, Rubach 1996) to basic syllabification in an attempt to account for phenomena where syllabification alone is inadequate. In this paper we argue against this approach and argue for a second approach, the PROSODIC approach. The essence of the prosodic approach is that there is a HIERARCHY of prosodic categories, of which the syllable is one, any one of which can serve as the context for phonological rules. Essentially, the argument is that prosodic categories, independently required for a wide variety of phonological processes, are sufficient for accounting for all the phenomena that resyllabification or ambisyllabification have been used for, whereas the reverse is not true. Resyllabification and ambisyllabification are invoked ad hoc for certain phenomena and cannot account adequately for the full range of processes that can be understood in terms of prosodic categories. Resyllabification and ambisyllabification are therefore superfluous and can be dispensed with, indeed must be dispensed with, in an explanatory theory of phonology.
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