Causes and effects of misreported syllable structures
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Laurence Labrune
Abstract
This commentary paper offers a discussion on the methodological, epistemological, and theoretical issues concerning the status of the syllable and mora, as well as the problems raised by their (mis)characterization. It first addresses some methodological biases that occur in the description and analysis of the phonological units of languages, the problem of the reliability of speaker intuitions, with an example taken from French verlan, as well as the influence of writing on phonological representations. Second, building on the Budai Rukai example and on one other case of misanalyzed syllable structure, that of Tokyo Japanese, it questions the status of the syllable as an indispensable, universal unit. In order to avoid some of the problems that stem from the mischaracterization of the syllable, it is proposed that the notion of prosodeme, instead of that of syllable, should be used as a pretheoretical notion when attempting to identify the basic prosodic unit of a language.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Target Article: Benjamin Macaulay; Issue Editor: Hans-Martin Gärtner
- Speaker judgments alone cannot diagnose syllable structure
- Comments
- Dismantling the universal prosodic hierarchy with possible evidence for the absence of syllables
- Elicitation tasks, language contact, and syllable structure in Budai Rukai
- ‘Direct’ elicitation and phonological argumentation
- Causes and effects of misreported syllable structures
- Intuition, intonation, inconsistency, and innateness
- The reality of Rukai Glides
- Native speakers and syllable structure
- Three worlds of variables to control in linguistics
- Reply
- Issues in systematizing the elicitation and analysis of syllable structure
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Target Article: Benjamin Macaulay; Issue Editor: Hans-Martin Gärtner
- Speaker judgments alone cannot diagnose syllable structure
- Comments
- Dismantling the universal prosodic hierarchy with possible evidence for the absence of syllables
- Elicitation tasks, language contact, and syllable structure in Budai Rukai
- ‘Direct’ elicitation and phonological argumentation
- Causes and effects of misreported syllable structures
- Intuition, intonation, inconsistency, and innateness
- The reality of Rukai Glides
- Native speakers and syllable structure
- Three worlds of variables to control in linguistics
- Reply
- Issues in systematizing the elicitation and analysis of syllable structure
