Chapter 3
Syllable structure in Assam Sora
have a CV syllable structure. The universal tendency can be understood by consid- ering the phonetic and phonological principles that determine the syllable structure in different languages.
The phonetic basis of a syllable structure is often defined by the notion of sonority peak, since sonority peaks help in identifying the number of syllables in a given utterance (Mannell et al., 2009). Sonority is a speech sound phenomena and speech sounds generally have different degrees of sonority. Factors determining sonority in speech sounds include degree of vocal constriction of a speech sound, sustainability of a speech sound, and the loudness of a speech sound. Thus, sonorous sounds have least vocal constriction, can be produced for longer duration, and are louder than non- sonorous sounds. Therefore, based on these properties it is known that vowels are the most sonorous and obstruents are the least sonorous speech sounds. Moreover, nasal and liquid consonants occupy an intermediate position between the most sonorous and the least sonorous speech sounds. Hence, since vowels occur in the nucleus position of a syllable, it is possible to identify a syllable from its sonority peak. This indicates that sonority in a syllable gradually increases from the onset position and reaches the highest peak at the nucleus and then gradually declines in coda position. Thus, sonority peaks can provide information about the number of syllables in a speech utterance.
However, sonority peaks in a syllable does not give any information about syllable boundaries. Therefore, it is often difficult to identify syllable boundaries particularly in case of polysyllabic words. A polysyllabic word has more than one syllable and it is difficult to mark the beginning and end of individual syllables in such words.
Generally native speakers of a language are able to identify the number of syllables in a word without understanding the notion of sonority peaks and they are also able to identify syllable boundaries intuitively. However, this is not applicable to non-native languages. Therefore, for identifying syllable boundaries of a non-native language a
phonological principle known asonset maximization is generally applied (Davenport et al., 2010). The principle of onset maximization suggests that in case of polysyllabic words a medial consonant should be syllabified as a onset consonant rather than as a coda consonant. Thus, the principle of onset maximization reinforces the fact that languages generally prefer to have open syllables, and therefore a CV syllable structure is a frequently occurring syllable structure in languages of the world. However, in languages that allow both onset and coda consonants to occur, such languages also have a CVC syllable structure. Thus, beside a single onset, many languages also allow a single coda in their syllable structure.
Syllable structure with single onset consonant and single coda consonant is typo- logically more common. However, some languages also allow more than one consonant in the onset position as well as in the coda position. A maximum of two consonants is usually permissible in a number of languages, but some languages allow consonant sequences up to six consonants. However, there are constraints regarding the po- sitioning and number of phonemes in a syllable structure and such constraints are known as phonotactic constraints (Mannell et al., 2009). Phonotactic constraints basically limit the number of permissible phonemes in a syllable structure and also define the sequence of permissible consonants in onset and coda positions of a sylla- ble structure. For instance, in English, while there can be three consonants including /spr/ in the onset position of a word such as ‘sprint’, there can be no words that has onset consonants /dm/ or /bm/. Thus, phonotectic constraints not only con- trol the number of possible consonants but also define the specific consonants that can form a sequence in a syllable structure. However, phonotactic constraints are generally language specific. This indicates that consonant sequences allowed in the onset position of a particular language may not be permissible in another language.
Additionally, consonant sequences in a syllable structure also abide by the sonority principle. This ensures that, a least sonorous consonant should always precede the
more sonorous consonant in the onset position and vice versa in the coda position.
Thus, both phonotactic constraints and sonority principles can explain the internal composition of a syllable structure and can also determine whether a particular sound sequence is a valid syllable or not.
Thus, it is clear that describing syllable structure primarily includes identifying permissible syllable templates and determining the shape and length of minimal words in languages. Also, the phonological basis of forming longer words can be understood from the constraints that regulate the sequencing of two or more syllables within a single word. Significantly, a relative relation between adjacent syllables of longer words is also an important feature of syllable structure across languages. In some languages the longer words exhibit a tendency to make one syllable stronger or more prominent than the adjacent syllable. This phenomena is known as stress (Kager, 2007), it indicates that the stronger syllable bears stress and the weaker syllable is unstressed. However, stress is not an inherent feature of the syllable, it is a relative relation of strength or prominence between stressed and unstressed syllables. Thus, stress is a binary feature that is composed of a stressed and a unstressed syllable and the binary unit of stress is generally known as a foot (Davenport et al., 2010).
Moreover, depending on the position of stressed and unstressed syllable within a foot there can be two types of foot structures. If the stressed syllable precedes the unstressed syllable it is known astrochee foot, and if the stressed syllable follows the unstressed syllable it is known as iambic foot. Thus, stress in many languages are primarily categorized on the basis of these two foot structures. While some languages such as Czech, French and Turkish have a consistent foot structure, in languages such as English the foot structure may vary depending on the morphophonological function of stress. However, the focus of this chapter is to examine the physical or phonetic properties of word stress and explaining further the morphophonological functions of stress are not within the scope of this work.
Examining the phonetic properties of word stress is primarily useful in distin- guishing stressed syllables from unstressed syllables. Also, it provides significant information about the quality of vowel nuclei in stressed syllables. Therefore, it is important to examine the phonetic properties of word stress particularly the features that attribute prominence to stressed syllables. Prominence is generally attributed to stressed syllables through additional effort in its production that is perceivably dis- tinct from unstressed syllables. This indicates that, stressed syllables are produced with greater articulatory movement that results in making the stressed syllables sound longer, louder and pitched higher than the unstressed syllables. These features are extensively studied to describe the phonetic properties of stressed syllables across languages and evidences suggest stressed syllables are effectively distinguished on the basis of these properties. Therefore, it is widely accepted that the phonetic basis of stressed syllables include features such as duration, intensity and fundamental fre- quency. Hence, in addition to describing the syllable structure and phonotectic con- straints of Assam Sora in§3.2, this chapter also explores the typology of word stress in Austroasiatic and Munda languages in §3.3 and describes the acoustic phonetic analysis of word stress in Assam Sora in §3.4. Finally, the findings and observations of the chapter are concluded in§3.5.