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Epenthesis and syllable weight

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Abstract

A standard assumption in the moraic theory of syllable weight is that a syllable must contain at least one mora, which is usually associated with a vowel. This paper presents arguments and evidence against this assumption. The evidence is drawn primarily from the behavior of epenthetic syllables in Mohawk and Iraqi Arabic with brief reference to Selayarese and Yapese. It is demonstrated that weight-sensitive phenomena such as stress assignment, vowel lengthening, and the bimoraicity of the minimal word consistently treat certain epenthetic syllables in these languages as lacking weight. To explain the behavior of epenthetic syllables, the paper proposes a revision to the theory of epenthesis to permit ‘stranded’ or unlicensed consonants to project (or be mapped) to syllables that have no weight. Such syllables may remain without a vocalic nucleus throughout the phonology and as such are interpreted as weightless by various phonological processes.

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Research for this paper was supported by grants from the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (410-89-0515, 410-92-0759). Valuable comments and suggestions were made by Cindy Brown, Michael Kenstowicz, John Matthews, Keren Rice, Sharon Rose, Rachel Thorburn, Moira Yip and two groups of anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful to Mark Baker for his assistance in assembling and verifying some of the Mohawk data.

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Piggott, G.L. Epenthesis and syllable weight. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 13, 283–326 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992784

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