12-02-2016, 06:38 PM
Sam, you're a man after my own heart.
I more or less agree with your thoughts on vowels. My opinion is that [o] is a vowel and that [a] and [y] together make up some kind of vowel. You can think of [o] and [a/y] as the "cardinal" vowels which [e] and [i] sequences modify. However, both [e] sequences and sometimes [ch, sh] appear in the place of vowels because of [y] deletion. Once we have those basic identifications as vowels (whatever their specific values) we can syllabify.
I have personally taken the syllable of each vowel to be 1) the vowel character, 2) everything leftward of that vowel until another vowel or beginning of the word is reached, and 3) everything rightward of the vowel if there are no more vowels in the word. I've found that the structure of such syllables is pretty regular and relatively simple.
I think further work will show that the structure of syllables within words is actually rather regular too. I don't know where it will all lead, but I hope that we will be able to identify the most meaningful syllable (or even parts of a syllable) within each word, and that the text structure will be made more obvious. So often people say that phrases "look" alike as a basis for judgement, but now we have the chance of something more solid.
I more or less agree with your thoughts on vowels. My opinion is that [o] is a vowel and that [a] and [y] together make up some kind of vowel. You can think of [o] and [a/y] as the "cardinal" vowels which [e] and [i] sequences modify. However, both [e] sequences and sometimes [ch, sh] appear in the place of vowels because of [y] deletion. Once we have those basic identifications as vowels (whatever their specific values) we can syllabify.
I have personally taken the syllable of each vowel to be 1) the vowel character, 2) everything leftward of that vowel until another vowel or beginning of the word is reached, and 3) everything rightward of the vowel if there are no more vowels in the word. I've found that the structure of such syllables is pretty regular and relatively simple.
I think further work will show that the structure of syllables within words is actually rather regular too. I don't know where it will all lead, but I hope that we will be able to identify the most meaningful syllable (or even parts of a syllable) within each word, and that the text structure will be made more obvious. So often people say that phrases "look" alike as a basis for judgement, but now we have the chance of something more solid.