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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016
In the process of defining the phonological syllable as a unit which may or may not correspond to the phonetic and phonemic definitions of the syllable, a few of what seem to be basic assumptions regarding the nature of syllables have been overridden, the result in Russian and Czech being the accumulation of some residual segments, which are neither syllables nor members of any syllables. These residual segments are called “isolated consonantal microsegments.”
In this paper, we would like to examine one particular definition of the phonological syllable with regard to four criteria for the syllable outlined by Greenberg with particular attention to the fate of the isolated consonantal microsegments (ICM’s).
1 For linguists interested in examining the structure of the Russian syllable as an end in itself or for the various statistical and informational studies which may utilize it as the primary unit, there is the problem of dealing with certain phonological segments which are deemed to be asyllabic. These segments, called isolated consonantal microsegments, represent a fraction of the various prefixes and prepositions of Russian which consist of either one consonantal phoneme or two such phonemes without a syllabic nucleus. There are fifteen such segments in Russian: /k, g, f, f′, v, v′, s, s′, z, z′, š, ž, fs, vz, vz′/. There is a rather obvious correlation between these phonological segments and the morphological forms which eventually would be classified as prepositions and/or prefixes, /k, g/ are then two phonemic manifestations of the preposition k “toward”; /f, f′, v, v′/ are manifestations of the preposition/prefix v “in, into” and /s, s′, z, z′, š,ž/ being the various manifestations of the preposition/prefix s “with, from” and various other meanings as well as derivational functions. The segments /fs, vz, vz′/ represent the manifestations of the reduced prefix voz, i.e. vz “upward.”
For the term isolated consonantal microsegment (ICM), see C. Hockett, Manual of Phonology: Memoir 11 of the IJAL, (Waverly Press, Baltimore, 1955), pp. 62-64 and H. Kucera, “Entropy, Redundancy, and Functional Load in Russian and Czech,” in American Contributions to the Fifth International Congress of Slavists, Sofia, 1963 (Mouton, The Hague) pp. 197-8.
2 berg, J. Green, “Is the Vowel-Consonant Dichotomy Universal?”, in Word 18 (1962), p. 74 Google Scholar.
3 Hockett, Manual of Phonology, p. 43.
4 Ibid., p. 51.
5 Kucera, , “Entropy,” p. 198 Google Scholar; “Statistical Determination of Isotopy” Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, Cambridge, Mass., 1962 (Mouton, The Hague, 1964) p. 715; The Phonology of Czech (Mouton, The Hague, 1961) pp. 71-2.
6 Kucera, , “Isotopy,” p. 715 Google Scholar. For division of interludes cf. Phonology of Czech, p. 81.
7 Kucera, , “Entropy,” p. 197 Google Scholar. For terminal, external and internal disjunctures, see Phonology of Czech, pages 44, 57 and 61 respectively.
8 Kucera, , Phonology of Czech, p. 61 Google Scholar.
9 Greenberg, , “Vowel-Consonant Dichotomy,” p. 74 Google Scholar.
10 Kucera, , “Entropy,” p. 198 Google Scholar.
11 Kucera, , Phonology of Czech, p. 72 Google Scholar.
12 Kucera, , “Entropy,” p. 199 Google Scholar.
13 Hockett, , Manual pp. 62–3 Google Scholar.
14 berg, Green, “Vowel-Consonant Dichotomy,” p. 79 Google Scholar.
15 Ibid.
16 Kucera, , “Isotopy,” p. 715 Google Scholar.
17 Kucera, , “Entropy,” p. 198 Google Scholar.
18 Halle, M., The Sound Pattern of Russian (Mouton, The Hague, 1959), pp. 65, 68–9 Google Scholar.