Specimen Texts

The binary-to-ternary rhythmic continuum in stress typology: layered feet and non-intervention constraints

“…Ternary stress has been reported for a handful of other languages: Estonian (Hint 1973), Sentani (Cowan 1965), Hocąk (Miner 1979) and possibly Finnish (Carlson 1978). The pitch-accent patterns of a few other systems, for example Gilbertese (Blevins & Harrison 1999) and Irabu Ryukyuan (Shimoji 2009), have also been claimed to display similar ternary groupings 1…”

Nasal consonants, sonority and syllable phonotactics: the dual nasal hypothesis

“…Of interest here is the fact that the liquid is excluded from word-initial onsets as well as some word-medial onsets. As stated by Cowan (1965: 7), the phoneme /l/ ‘only occurs intervocally and never as word-initial nor after consonant. In the latter two positions it is represented by /d/ as bound and obligatory heterophonemic variant’.…”

“…Another case of complementary distribution between high- and low-sonority nasals is found in Sentani, spoken in West New Guinea. Our presentation is based on Cowan (1965) and Foley (1986). Sentani has only ten consonants in its inventory: three stops /p t k/, two fricatives /f h/, two nasals /m n/, a liquid /l/ and two glides /w j/ 12 .…”

“… 12 Cowan (1965: 6) gives the set of stops as /b d k/, noting that ‘the plosives /b/ and /d/ are unvoiced lenes, respectively bilabial and gingival, but free non-distinctive variants include unvoiced and voiced types’. Here we follow Foley (1986: 59), where the set of Sentani stops is given as /p t k/.…”

“… 13 Glides occur word-initially, predominantly as allophones of high vowels. According to Cowan (1965: 7–8), they are only marginally phonemic, with a low functional yield. It may well be that these word-initial glides are in fact nuclear offglides, following Smith's (2007) proposal for the Iglesias dialect of Campidanian Sardinian, which presents a situation parallel with that in Sentani.…”