"syllabicity"

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Jens and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 7:56 AM

> On Sat, 22 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> [...]
> > Sorry I did not make myself clear. *t(V) and *tV.

Jens objected:

> Your original statement was that the very existence or non-existence of a
> vowel in the ending did not matter, and that a one-vowel system of this
> kind was in effect a no-vowel system. Now cornered, you make brackets
> matter. You have now arrived at a two-vowel system in which there are
> (V) and V opposed to each other - and to zero.

Pat responds:

Well, this seems to be a notational problem.

I, probably incorrectly, used *t(V) to attempt to indicate that a -*t was
the result of a stress-accent-motivated reduction from an earlier -*tV while
*tV showed the morpheme in its fuller form under the condition of
stress-accentuation.

How would you prefer to indicate a single morpheme, *tV, that has two
realizations: unstressed -*t and stressed -*tV?

Pat

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