Irish ambisyllabicity (fwd)

[Andrew Carnie]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 09:09:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Antony Dubach Green <adg1 at cornell.edu>
To: The Celtic Linguistics List <CELTLING at mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject: Irish ambisyllabicity

Well, I guess I'll take Andrew's hint and post.

I'm wondering if anyone else on this list has given any thought to
ambisyllabicity in Irish. A native speaker has informed me that her
intuition says that a single consonant after a short stressed vowel is
amibsyllabic (which I mark <>), e.g. glana 'clean (pl.)' [gla<n>@]. After a
long vowel, though there is no amibsyllabicity, e.g. ba/na 'white (pl.)'
[ba:.n@] (. = clean syllable boundary).  In obstruent+sonorant and
sonorant+obstruent clusters after a short stressed vowel, the obstruent is
ambisyllabic, e.g. ocras 'hunger' [o<k>r at s]; olcas 'evil' [ol<k>@s].

I'm trying to come up with a nice theoretical explanation for this, but I'm
having difficulty coming up with a plausible explanation why codas are
maximized after short vowels but not after long ones.  If anyone else has
any insights, I'd be happy to hear them.  I've been banging my head against
this for a couple of weeks now with little but a headache to show for it.

________________________________________________________________
Antony Dubach Green   *  adg1 at cornell.edu  *   Antain O hUaithne
Department of Linguistics           Mas feidir leat seo a leamh,
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