Open Syllables Research Articles

Checked/Unchecked Correlation in the English Vowels

All English dialects show a series of oppositions of the type beet/bit, bet/bate, look/Luke, etc. Several have a complete correlation of this “checked/unchecked,” cutting through the entire vowel pattern. All interpretations of this opposition that play a rôle in current discussions treat the unchecked members of the correlation (e.g., beet, bate, Luke, etc.) as being formed by the addition of a specific mark to the corresponding checked member. For Smith and Trager (and Sweet before them), this mark was dipthongalization; for Jones, length; for Jakobson, Chomsky, and Halle, tenseness. These all assume some extra effort, some greater complexity, for the unchecked vowels as compared with the checked vowels. This assumption is contradicted, however, by the neutralization of this opposition in open syllables. That the archephoneme here is realized with a phonetic type resembling the unchecked term implies that either it is the checked term that is marked or that the English vowel system has a perverse economy in which a special articulatory effort is demanded precisely in contexts where this effort can have no linguistic relevance.

Syllabic features and phonic impression in English, German, French and Spanish

An attempt is made to analyze objectively the syllabic features which contribute to the subjective impression a language makes upon a foreign ear. Four languages are involved in this analysis - English, German, French and Spanish. The syllabic character of each one is emphasized by comparison with the others. 2000 syllables are analyzed in each of the four languages. Seven aspects of the syllable emerge from the objective data. (1) Phonic content in terms of place of articulation based either on the ten most frequent syllables or on the complete corpus of 2000 syllables, shows the following preferences: in English, apical consonants with central vowels: in German, apical consonants with center and front vowels; in (2) The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education. French, apical consonants with front vowels; in Spanish, apical consonants with a balance of open and mid-open vowels. (2) Consonant-to-vowel ratio, or simply consonantal load since each syllable has only one vowel, is highest in German, almost balanced in English, and lowest in French and Spanish. (3) Variety and complexity of syllabic structures are both greater in the two Germanic languages than in the two Romance languages. The prevailing structures are divided among CVC and CV in German and English, whereas in Spanish and French the CV structure holds a majority by itself alone. (4) Syllable length, in terms of number of phonemes, is also greater in Germanic than in Latin languages. (5) The predominance of closed syllables in German and English (63 and 60 percent) is almost as marked as the preference for open syllables in Spanish and French (72 and 76 percent). (6) In frequency of different-syllable structures, Spanish stands alone - it shows the smallest number of different syllables; English shows the largest number, with German and French not far behind. (7) And again Spanish is set apart with respect to the relationship of syllable length with average-group frequency — Spanish repeats its shorter syllables more often than the three other languages. To these objective data correspond subjective impressions such as frontal resonance, active articulation, auditory richness, forward motion, heaviness, musical predominance, sequential legato, repetitiveness, monotony, (or their opposites) the sum of which contributes considerably to characterizing a language.

Open Syllable Languages and their Evolution: Common Slavic and Japanese

Open Syllable Languages and their Evolution: Common Slavic and Japanese

Persistence of the open syllable in defective articulation.

Persistence of the open syllable in defective articulation.

MIDDLE ENGLISH LENGTHENING IN OPEN SYLLABLES

Transactions of the Philological SocietyVolume 61, Issue 1 p. 124-148 MIDDLE ENGLISH LENGTHENING IN OPEN SYLLABLES E. J. Dobson, E. J. DobsonSearch for more papers by this author E. J. Dobson, E. J. DobsonSearch for more papers by this author First published: November 1962 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.1962.tb00996.xCitations: 3Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume61, Issue1November 1962Pages 124-148 RelatedInformation

A Study of Quantity in Hausa

The work on which this article is based was done during my visit to the Northern Provinces of Nigeria, 1948–9. Selected material was studied, as spoken by Hausas, first in Zaria, then in Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Daura, and Damagaram (Zinder). In Zaria I made certain statements from my observation of the utterances, which permitted me to classify the words according to the behaviour of their final syllables. Although there were dialectal differences, my observation of the utterances in other areas gave me no reason to alter my classification. The study of the final open syllable in Hausa has already interested others; in America, J. H. Greenberg and C. T. Hodge, and in this country, Dr. G. P. Bargery and Major R. C. Abraham. In this article I shall consider the final open syllable of the nominal only, by which I understand that class of word in Hausa which can be followed in close syntactical relationship by one of the enclitics, ne or ce.

Learning to Talk

HIS iS an account of the phonetic aspects of how one small boy learned 1 to speak his native English. The subject was born 1b, January, 1941, in New York City. In September, 1942, he was moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, where he has lived since. At the time of writing (April, 1945) he is fairly healthy, nervous, over-active, self-assertive, frequently 'difficult,' garrulous, and gregarious. His principal associates have been his father, mother, and mother's uncle. All are college-educated New Yorkers. Their speech is normal, with the following differences: The mother's uncle consistently 'drops r's' and uses [3I] in words like bird. The mother has had speech-training and done speech-teaching. Her usage in words like ask and words with final and preconsonantal r's is erratic. She says [sk] or [ask], [bad] or [bsd]. The father spent many of his formative years in Upstate New York and California, and consistently sounds final and preconsonantal r's. The child's speech may have been retarded by whooping-cough at the age of one, and by being, during the subject period, an only child. His passive vocabulary developed normally, and by the end of his second year he is believed to have understood several hundred words. At 12 months his babble consisted of repetition of several simple open syllables: [amarUa], [papapa], [gulguJgu], [rUlrUirgi], etc. The consonants were [r], [v], [;], [Ji], [j], [9]. The vowels were [i], [wI], and a variable low vowel [iJa/a/e], here transcribed [a]. The syllable [nJa] is believed to have signified annoyance and [pa] contentment. [i:] was a cry of pleasure. By 18 months he had added [b], [m], [n], [k], [d] and [w]; also a back round vowel varying from [X] to [u]. At 20 months he tried a wordv car [ka], but after a few trials dropped it and did not take it up again for several months. His next attempt was gone [g(n)], in which the second element varied from [U] to [o] and the third, when present, might be [n], [m], or [u]. For three months this word constituted his entire vocabulary. He used it frequently and always appositely. Between 18 and 24 months he added [h], [p], [t], and [s]. He dropped [tu] and the palatal and labiodental stops and nasals. The low vowel narrowed its range of variation down to [a/a]. The back-round vowel split into two: [o/3] and [o/ouXu]. At 23 months his babble was varied to include alternations of syllables: [gogugogu], [dadidadi], [aiaioi], [uiuiui]. He had added the following words: hole [ho(u)], meow (cat) [iau], woof-woof (dog) [?U?U], moo (cow)

Hittite Evidence against Full-Grade o

The familiar doctrine that Primitive Indo-European possessed a full-grade (accented) vowel o derives from Ferdinand de Saussure.1 His thesis was that in addition to ' in ablaut relation to e there was another vowel which appeared in Greek and Italic as 6 and which was due to the influence of a certain lost consonant of undefined character. He had three reasons for this assumption: (1) Greek and Italic present in certain words an 6 that is not observed to alternate with 9. (2) Greek and Italic o in open syllables corresponds to Indo-Iranian a, according to 'Brugmann's law'; but sometimes Graeco-Italic o corresponds to Indo-Iranian a in open syllables, and de Saussure held that such pairs came from the full-grade, non-ablauting o. (3) Armenian usually responds to Graeco-Italic o with o, but in certain words with a, and in these words again de Saussure found full-grade, non-ablauting o. A fourth reason was later supplied by Zubaty,2 who held that in Lithuanian full-grade 5 appears as uo while original 5 in ablaut relation with e or j appears as o. In 1900 Holger Pedersen3 showed that there is no correlation between the four lines of assumed evidence. Indo-Iranian frequently has a in an open syllable beside Graeco-Italic o in ablaut with e (e.g. Skt. katards:Gk. w6repos). Armenian a sometimes corresponds to o in ablaut with e (e.g. asr 'fleece' : Gk. I~bos 'fleece', rcKw 'comb'). Lithuanian uo sometimes appears in the e-series (e.g. Lith. suiodiiai, OIcel., OE sBt 'soot' :IE sed'sit'). Armenian a never corresponds with Indo-Iranian a in an open syllable when this represents Indo-European o. Lithuanian uo sometimes appears alongside of Armenian o (e.g. Lith. Uiodiiu 'smell' :Arm. hot 'odor'). There remains, therefore, only the fact that the relatively few languages that distinguish o

The New School of Japan, Founded for the Purpose of Making the Use of the Newly Invented Letters

THIS singular production is an attempt, by means of a quaintly conceived dialogue between two Japanese script reformers, to enlist home and foreign support, especially financial support, towards the promulgation of yet another script for the purposes of the Japanese written language, by modifications of and additions to the roman alphabet of the West. But European scholars have already accomplished this, and the existing system of romanisation is sufficiently perfect for all practical purposes. That system uses the roman letters, as we use them, to transcribe the characters of the Japanese syllabary, each of which represents a vowel or an open syllable; thus ka, ki, ku, ko, ke represent simply and adequately corresponding simple kana (syllabic) characters. But the proposed system would use single alphabetic letters to represent the kana. Thus ka, ki, &c., are written n, v, u, k; for ke a sort of reversed fe is used. The modifications of sound, voicing, doubling, and lengthening are denoted by ordinary devices and combinations of these, and a few new letters are invented. Thus Kono hon wa, Okuma Shigeru to Yamada Eizo... (this book contains a talk between Okuma Sh. and Yamada Ei.) is printed, according to the new system, Pk cx g Ttuf-Cat m Ofr-Tict (two or three new letters are represented here by their nearest usual ones). Eizo Yamada is the “originator” of the new system; the preface,.dated November, 1909, is signed by him and Muneyasu Oki, who is “business associate,” and photographs of inventor and associate follow the preface. The New School of Japan, Founded for the Purpose of Making the Use of the Newly Invented Letters. Pp. x + 58. (Tokyo: Dokuritsu Bungakki.)