Irish ambisyllabicity (fwd)

[Andrew Carnie]

Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 09:08:15 -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)

>Do you suppose this phenomenon has anything to do with the lengthening of
>poststress consonants in Welsh (c.f. Briony William's dissertation and
>article in J. of Phonetics)? Or is this an independent development?
>
I didn't know about this. Historically it's certainly independent, but
typologically they may be related. I'm thinking it has something to do with
"close contact" (Silbenschnittkorrelation) effects, as has been proposed
for various Germanic languages.  Swedish also lengthens consonants after
short stressed vowels, and this has been attributed to close contact of
short vowels with following consonants. Ambisyllabicity in Irish and C
lengthening in Welsh could maybe be attributed to it too.  Can you give me
the full references?

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