Irish ambisyllabicity (fwd)

[Andrew Carnie]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 08:15:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Antony Dubach Green <adg1 at cornell.edu>
To: The Celtic Linguistics List <CELTLING at mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Irish ambisyllabicity (fwd)

Nicholas Kibre wrote:
>This is admittedly a doozie. My initial though is that this must have to
>do with some kind of desire for stressed syllables to be heavy.  The real
>puzzler is why long vowels count as already being heavy when
>vowel+sonorant rhymes don't.

CVC syllables aren't heavy in Irish to begin with.
>
>Well, here's one idea. Does Irish allow long vowels before clusters? If
>it doesn't, there might be a solution something like this:

But it does. Irish is full of V:CC sequences (e.g. [e:s'k'] 'fish (pl.)')

But thanks for your help anyway, Nick.

________________________________________________________________
Antony Dubach Green   *  adg1 at cornell.edu  *   Antain O hUaithne
Department of Linguistics           Mas feidir leat seo a leamh,
Cornell University                    scriobh chugam as Gaeilge!
Ithaca, NY 14853-4701, USA
H: (607) 272-7431              GO MAIRE NA TEANGACHA CEILTEACHA!
W: (607) 255-3844                   BYWIO YR IEITHOEDD CELTAIDD!