Minimal graphematic words in English and German

Lexical evidence for a theory of graphematic feet

Bibliographic Data

ID19509367
AuthorsMartin Evertz (0000-0001-5434-6267, University of Cologne, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume19
Issue2
Pages189-211
Publication date2016-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueWritten Language & Literacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1387-6732 • E-ISSN: 1570-6001
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/wll.19.2.03eve
OpenAlexW2617348299
LanguageEN
References cited21

It has been frequently noted in the literature that content words need to consist of at least three letters; this observation is commonly dubbed “three letter rule.” However, a survey of the CELEX database (Baayen et al. 1995) shows that there are (nearly) no content words in English and German that begin with two or more consonant letters and end in a single vowel letter. Words such as [bruː] are not spelt * but with an additional letter. These findings cannot be accounted for by the three letter rule but they are explicable within a supra-segmental theory of graphematics that includes graphematic feet and graphematic weight: a well-formed graphematic word consists of at least one graphematic foot that in turn consists of at least one heavy graphematic syllable. This paper offers a data-based survey in order to answer the question whether there is a suprasegmental minimality constraint for monosyllabic graphematic words in English and German

Arithmetic · Consonant · German · Linguistics · Syllable · Vowel · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub