Procrustean Vowel Length: The Bimoraic Weight of VC and CVV Tautonyms

Less noticeable but even more remarkable than the bifurcation of our consonant letter names into two syllable shapes is the general sorting of their vowels: short when vowel initial; long when vowel final. This configuration of short vowels in closed syllables and long vowels in open syllables is interpreted as a bimoraic template governing not only the minimal but also the maximal structure of stressed syllables in English. Phonological symptoms of this bimoraic constraint range from the shortenings in pairs like keep-kept, wise-wisdom and sane-sanity alongside the so-called “CiV lengthening” in pairs like comedy-comedian. Orthographic symptoms range from the patterning of word-final, silent -e (e.g., mat-mate), double-vowel spellings (e.g., set-see) for long vowels and double-consonant letter spellings for short vowels (e.g., biter-bitter). However, this sort of vowel alternation also surfaces dialectically across some words (e.g., privacy, vitamin, zebra) and even idiolectically among others (e.g., data and lever). For a chapter focusing on vowel length, this chapter is also the longest. Combined with its many online supplements, it could easily be a book itself. It is also, terminologically, the most sophisticated and, theoretically, the most contentious: Both “extrasyllabification” and “ambisyllabification” are critical to our analyses.