Arrernte: A Language with No Syllable Onsets

Abstract

That syllable onsets are present in all languages is widely regarded as axiomatic, and the preference for syllabifying consonants as onsets over codas is considered a linguistic universal. The Central Australian language Arrernte provides the strongest possible counterevidence to this universal, with phenomena generally used to determine syllabification suggesting that all consonants in Arrernte are syllabified as codas at the word level. Attempts to explain the Arrernte facts in terms of syllables with onsets either make the wrong predictions or require proposals that render the putative onset universal unfalsifiable.

Boundaries versus Onsets in Syllabic Segmentation

“…Regarding syllable onset preferences, the systematic assignment of the intervocalic consonant to the onset of the second syllable observed in the present experiments is consistent with general principles of syllabification (e.g., Selkirk, 1982;Venneman, 1988; but see Blevins, 1995;Breen & Pensalfini, 1999, for some possible counterexamples). According to the Obligatory Onset Principle (OOP; Hooper, 1972) an intervocalic consonant is affiliated with the following vowel as long as there is no violation of phonotactic constraints.…”

VC vs. CV syllables: a comparison of Aboriginal languages with English

“…This resulted in the loss of the contrast between the two high members of the earlier three-vowel system. The resulting two-vowel system, which seems to be still maintained in one or two dialects (but not in that dealt with by Breen & Pensalfini 1999) has a low vowel /a/ and a featureless vowel /´/ whose surface features are dependent on the adjacent consonants. Most dialects have innovated a high front vowel /i/ and perhaps a high back rounded vowel /u/, whose status, however, is still unclear (see Breen 2001: 51-52).…”

“…The primacy of the CV syllable in phonological theory has recently been challenged by Breen & Pensalfini (1999) with phonological data from Arrernte, a language spoken in central Australia. At the surface, Arandic languages certainly have CV syllables: an utterance can consist of just a CV syllable, such as [ma] 'here, take it!'.…”

“…Recently however, Breen & Pensalfini (1999) have challenged the primacy of the CV syllable in phonological theory with data from Arrernte, an Aboriginal language spoken in central Australia. In this study, we set out to see if there is any acoustic phonetic basis to Breen & Pensalfini's claim.…”

The Phonology of Yurok Glottalized Sonorants: Segmental Fission under Syllabification

“…For example, the word lemon in American English is problematic since syllabifications le.mon and lem.on yield syllable types which are not found at word edges. In the first case, [le], a final nonlow lax vowel is parsed, though such lax 23 Additional facts motivating word-based syllabification are found in Oykangand and Arrernte, where word-medial codas are maximized to the exclusion of onsets (Sommer 1969;1970 andBreen andPensalfini 1999). The rare syllabification of VCV as VC.V in these languages can be directly related to the predominant pattern of vowel-initial, consonant-final words.…”