Chapter 3 Word Prosody and Prominence pattern in Deori
3.4 Syllable structure and distribution of phonemes in Deori
The findings reported in this chapter reveal that disyllabic roots are predominantly found in Deori which agrees with Jacquesson (2005). Monosyllables other than personal and the demonstrative pronoun also exist in the language, unlike Jacquesson (2005). The frequently occurring syllable combinations in Deori are as follows:
(16) Basic syllable structure of Deori
a. V(C) (n) ‘cloth’
b. V.CV udzu ‘navel/bamboo tube’
c. VC.CV ɑmsu ‘mat’
d. CV(C) tʃi(n) ‘blood’
e. CV.CV tʃipɑ ‘father’
f. CVC dɑm ‘wh-word’
g. CVC.CV kundi ‘God’
h. CVV ɡui ‘betel-nut’
i. CV.CV.CV kipiɹɑ ‘caterpillar’
Following the universal syllable typology (Leben, 1980; McCarthy, 1981a; Steriade, 1982;
Clements and Keyser, 1983), Deori employs CV syllable type as the unmarked syllable type. The canonical syllable structure in Deori is (C)V(C), with an optional onset and an optional coda.
Examples in (16), shows that Deori exhibits mostly open syllables. Phonologically, a vowel is necessary to construct a well-formed syllable; thus in Deori, a vowel can constitute a syllable
while a consonant alone cannot constitute a syllable. Therefore in Deori, only vowels are syllabic. Vowel length is not distinctive in Deori (as discussed in Chapter 2), hence, the predictability of length distinction has led us to ignore the moracity of CVV syllable types in Deori. In the next section, the phonotactic restrictions on the occurrences of vowels and consonants in initial and final syllables will be discussed.
3.4.1 Final syllables
Consonants in the coda position of the CVC syllable type are rare in Deori. Hence, coda is a marked position in Deori as fewer segments can occur in this position. There are four sonorant consonants /m/, [ŋ], and [ɹ], [-voice] fricative /s/, and [-voice] obstruent stop /k/ which sometimes occur in the coda position. The nasal consonant /n/ in the coda position subsequently gets deleted leading to the spreading of the [+nasal] feature to the preceding vowel as in (17) (g), (h). Some representative words with restricted coda consonants are shown in (17).
(17) a. dɑm ‘what’
b. kiŋ ‘hair’
c. ɔs.ti ‘finger’
d. duk.tʃɑ ‘CL42.one’
e. lepeduɹ ~ lepeduɹu ‘goat’
f. dekumuɹ ~ dekumuɹu ‘duck’
g. ɑ n) ~ ɑ ‘first person singular’
h. ɑɡu(n) ~ ɑɡ ‘knee’
Approximant [ɹ] as a coda is not consistent across the speakers. For instance, words like lepeduɹ
“goat” and dekumuɹ “duck” are pronounced as lepeduɹu and dekumuɹu (though not a common property across speakers) with a final high vowel /u/ after [ɹ]. Since lexical words with coda consonants are very rare in Deori, we ignore the moracity of CVC syllable types in Deori43.
There is no occurrence restriction of vowels in the final syllable, for instance, sεlɔ “home- made cigarette”, bɔsɛ “towel”, tʃeɡu “bow”, budzi “sister-in-law”, ɡis “comb”. Vowels co-occur with each other on either side of a word as in s “far”, midi “God”, pɔpɔ “tree”, tʃɛpɛ “cold”, buɹu “stomach”. owever, [-high –ATR] vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ and [-high +ATR] vowels [e] and [o]
42 Classifier
43 The lengthening in Deori happens to the second syllables and there seems to be no tendency in Deori to choose CVC in these syllables to attract stress.
have co-occurrence restrictions. While [-high –ATR] vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ can co-occur with each other (tʃɛpɛ “cold”, mɔ kɔ “rice”, sεlɔ “homemade cigarette”, bɔsɛ “towel”, sirɛ “night”, bibɔ
“granary”, dɛm “big” etc. and can occur in both the syllables, [-high +ATR] vowels [e] and [o]
can occur only in the initial syllable of an underived disyllabic word (for example: tʃeɡu “bow”, beku “beans” and in the initial and the medial syllable of an underived trisyllabic word (for example: lepeduɹ “goat”, tʃe e tʃi “ant” . [-high +ATR] vowels [e] and [o] never occur in the syllable-final position. This is an instance of vowel harmony which will be pursued further in Chapter 5. [-high +ATR] vowels [e] and [o] are allophones in Deori as discussed in Chapter 2 and the occurrences of these vowels are determined by the following [+high +ATR] vowels /i/ and /u/. Nasal vowels in Deori mostly occur in the final syllable as nasalization in Deori can be traced to a final nasal consonant that got deleted (at a previous stage of development of the language) inducing nasalization on the preceding vowel.
3.4.2 Pre-final syllables
Typologically, onsets are unmarked and codas are marked and the same is true for Deori as well.
In monosyllabic and disyllabic roots, all consonants except velar nasal consonant [ŋ] can occur in the pre-final position. In Deori, disyllabic roots are preponderant and except [+lateral] /l/
which is restricted to the word-initial position, there is no positional restriction on the occurrence of consonant segments in different syllable positions. The phonotactic restrictions reveal that in Deori the vowels /ɑ,ɛ,i,ɔ,u/ have no positional restriction in its occurrence in the first and the second syllable (for example: sεlɔ “home-made cigarette”, bɔsɛ “towel”, budzi “sister-in-law”, ɡis “comb”, si “mountain” etc. . The occurrence of [-high +ATR] vowels [e] and [o] is licensed to the word-initial position in monomorphemic disyllabic words as discussed in the previous section.
The unrestricted vowel inventory in both the syllables of disyllabic roots shows that sesquisyllables are not attested in Deori. The term sesquisyllable was first coined by Matisoff 1973 b . esquisyllable refers to a structure comprising of an unstressed ‘minor’ syllable followed by a stressed ‘major syllable’. The vowel of the minor syllable is typically a schwa or harmonizes with the vowel of the major syllable. This implies that a short centralized vowel occurs in the minor syllable, whereas the major syllable includes the full inventory (Matisoff, 1973 b . hile the ‘major’ syllable is considered a normal syllable, ‘minor’ syllable is
characterized as phonologically and phonetically reduced. The sesquisyllabic structure is considered as one of the important features in Mon-Khmer languages and Proto Tibeto-Burman languages. Tibeto-Burman languages are often divided into ‘schwa-languages’ vs. ‘non-schwa languages’ based on whether they are sesquisyllabic or strictly monosyllabic (Matisoff, 1973 b).
In his study on Tai languages, Pittayaporn 2005 states that the ‘minor’ syllable includes a more restricted inventory and most often a centralized vowel compared to the ‘major’ syllable. Butler (2014), in her study on South Asian languages, posits a slightly different view on sesquisyllables.
he states that vowels other than a centralized vowel can occur in the ‘minor’ syllable, but the vowel quality in the ‘minor’ syllable is lost and transforms into a schwa-like vowel when unstressed. Sesquisyllabicity has been noted in many Tibeto-Burman languages such as Lahu (Matisoff, 1973a), Mizo (Matisoff, 1990), Tangkhul Naga (Matisoff, 2003), Turung (Morey, 2005), and Sumi (Teo, 2014). Deori does not have reduced initial syllables like other Tibeto- Burman languages and thus exhibits no evidence of sesquisyllables. There is no positional occurrence restriction of vowels found in the prefinal syllable in Deori, moreover, vowels in the unstressed position do not transform to a schwa-like vowel which further validates the absence of sesquisyllables in Deori.
3.4.3 Vowel Epenthesis
Vowel epenthesis, as mentioned in Goswami (1994) and Jacquesson (2005), repairs marked syllable structure. Vowel epenthesis44 in Deori breaks word medial adjacent consonants thereby re-syllabifying CVC.CV syllables as CV.CV.CV as in (18) which shows that CV syllable type is the unmarked syllable type in Deori. The epenthetic vowel in example (18) appears to be an instance of an epenthetic and harmonized vowel. The vowel on the right is copied and shares the same [±ATR] feature of the adjacent vowel. For example, the epenthetic [+high] vowel /i/ in kokriŋ → kokiriŋ “crab” (18 a), have the same quality as the vowel on the right. Vowel epenthesis also breaks word-initial complex onsets as in (18 d).
44 A corpus of Deori have been put together to understand epenthesis in the language. At the moment we only have these examples.
(18) Goswami (1994) Jacquesson (2005) Gloss a. <kokring> /kokriŋ/ ~ <kokiring> /kokiriŋ/ ‘crab’
b. <sipre> /siprɛ/ ~ <sipere > /sipɛrɛ/ ‘door’
c. <lepedru> /lepedru/ ~ <lepeduru> /lepeduru/ ‘goat’
d. <griji> /gridzi/ ~ <giriji> /giridzi/ ‘sweat’
Vowel epenthesis also repairs a marked syllable structure of borrowed words in Deori. In example (19), the borrowed lexical words from English are epenthesized to fall in line with Deori syllable onsets which shows that complex onsets are disfavored in Deori. The epenthetic vowel /i/ and /ɑ/ breaks the ill-formed consonant cluster *br, *pl, and *gl in Deori.
(19) Epenthesis in loan words (Jacquesson, 2005)
English Deori
a. brush bɑrɑs
b. plate pilɛt
c. glass gilɑs
The epenthetic vowel in (19) breaks the illicit syllable type CCVCC and CCVCV and creates CV.CVC syllable type.
The next section discusses the word level prominence pattern in Deori. The prominence pattern in Deori will give us insights into the shape of the foot in Deori, i.e. whether the language makes use of a moraic [oµµ] or syllabic [oµoµ] foot.