a question for linguists

[Jonathan Amith]

I don't have John's original email in front of me, but there are two
processes that I can think of. Syllable deletion sometimes occurs in a
process known as haplology. To my knowledge, however, this is
generally applied to the loss of one of two like syllables in rapid
speech (in writing I think the term is haplography, i.e., -graph for -
logos).

There is another process which is often called "compensatory
lengthening" in which a coda segment loss is compensated for (in the
moraic count/weight of the syllable) by vowel lengthening. There is a
book by de Chene on this topic (I forget his first name) or it might
be de Chene and Anderson. A common example is from Greek.

Finally, there is lenition. I believe that Karen Dakin talks about
lenition (in the voicing of coda [h] such as occurs in Nahuatl future
forms). I don't know if she still holds to this, but the example would
be the roots of kwa: kwah and kwa: where the long vowel in the future
is the result of lenition.

None of these particularly refer to the words the John mentioned since
the last two are within the syllable.

Finally, Oapan Nahuatl has a process where lengthening occurs with the
loss of a syllable onset. Thus ya: from ika or tsi:a:pakohtli from
tsi:kapakohtli *tsi:kapahkohtli (ant-medicine tree, Bursera
morelensis). At least according to what I have seen in the literature
compensatory lengthening should not occur with onset loss, since
onsets are not supposed to contribute to syllable weight.

It would be interesting to do an acoustic analysis of the words John
mentions.

Jonathan Amith



Quoting Geoff Davis <mixcoatl at gmail.com>:

> On 6/1/05, idiez at mac.com <idiez at mac.com> wrote:
> >         What is the name of the process in nahuatl whereby
> syllables
> > are deleted (resulting in a lengthening of the vowel in the
> preceded
> > syllable)?
>
> I'm certainly no expert, but I believeyou're refering to the process
> of
> elision, by which syllables are omitted (elided). There may be some
> other process, additionally, that accounts for the change in the
> vowel
> length. Not certain on the latter.
>
> -Geoff
>


Jonathan D. Amith
Center for Latin American Studies
University of Chicago
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Kelly Hall, Room 305
Chicago, IL  60637
773/834-9753