POOT-yin/POOCH-in

[Steve K.]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2000 RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> Surely there are exceptions to this rule, e.g., where morpheme boundaries (or
> psuedo morpheme boundaries) are concerned? It would seem to me very unnatural
> to syllabify e.g., DUELING as DUE + LING, much less HOOTING as HOO + TING.
> Does this mean that BOOZER is BOO + ZER?

There's a difference between syllabication dots for hyphenation, and the
break one puts in showing a pronunciation. This is true of MW, RHC, WNW,
and AHD.

DUEL*ING is how the word would be split (in most, if not all American
dictionaries) as a headword, but the pronunciation would be shown as
doo'ling (with the appropriate diacritics). The point is, the breaks shown
in a headword largely stem from typographical conventions, whereas the
breaks shown in pronunciations have to do with vowel length, stress, and
other factors.

Furthermore, some morphemes are broken morphologically, others
phonologically. Thus, you will see breaks of CAS*TOR versus
CAST*ER; however, the pronunciations for both are kas't at r (@ for schwa).

Exact hyphenation rules are largely similar (but not exact) amoung AHD,
RHC, MW, and WNW. Likewise, exact pronunciations splits are largely
similar (but not exactly the same) among the Big 4. There are oodles of
words where the pronunciation split does not mirror the hyphenation split,
duelign and boozer are examples of these.

I still have a response to Thomas Paikeday's good question, but it will
take me a little longer to write it out.

--- Steve K.