A phonology joke from brynguist on twitter:
me: smongoose. snarwhal. phonologist: okayyy but-- me: sclemur. strhinocerous. phonologist: but that's not-- me: stracoon. sclamprey. phonologist: oKAY BUT that's not what maximal onset principle means me: ... schwombat
Because I’m into explaining the joke, for reference, the maximal onset principle actually refers to a thing you do when you’re breaking up a word into syllables. First, you figure out the centres (nuclei) of all the syllables, which generally correspond to the vowels. Then, you look at the remaining consonants and put them in the onset of the existing syllables where possible (the maximize the onset principle). Then any consonants that can’t be onsets get associated with the vowel that comes before them (they become part of the rime/rhyme of the previous syllable).
Thus, lamprey has two syllables because it has two vowels, one for each nucleus, and they’re divided as lam.prey rather than lamp.rey or lampr.ey because pr- is a good onset for English (there are English words that begin with pr-, like prey), even though -mp is also a perfectly good coda for English (we have words like lamp). It’s also not la.mprey (even though that would be a more maximal onset) because English doesn’t have any words that begin with mpr- (i.e. mpr- is not a licit onset in English). Other languages have different maximum onsets, but they all follow the maximal onset principle for their own syllable constraints.
The maximal onset principle gets treated in intro linguistics classes as if it’s an arbitrary procedure that you need to follow, but it’s really a descriptive generalization of a thing that languages do: we say mon.goose not mong.oose, le.mur not lem.ur, rhi.no.ce.rous not rhin.oc.er.ous, ra.coon not rac.oon, lam.prey not lamp.rey, and wom.bat not womb.at. We notice this in things like the pronunciation of “c” -- it’s like /s/ in rhinocerous and like /k/ in raccoon because “c” is affected by the vowel that comes after it, the vowel that’s in the same syllable as long as we maximize the onset.
The joke here is, what if the maximal onset principle actually meant that all English words must have the maximal onset for English? (Rather than just the maximal onset for the consonants they already have.) The juxtaposition with the animals is, frankly, inspired. schwombat.
