Abstract
This study looks at a minor but interesting phonological phenomenon that is vowel epenthesis in Toda songs, a Dravidian language spoken in South India. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the extent to which vowel epenthesis is used to satisfy the poetic meter preferences in songs and verses that are sensitive to the number of syllables per line in the light of Optimality Theory (OT). This study was largely based on songs collected by Emeneau [1] and recently recognised by Fabb [2]. It offers an analysis of vowel epenthesis using the ranked and violable constraints of OT [3]. The conclusion of the paper is that vowel epenthesis is triggered by a non-rhythmic size meter that constrains the length of the line of the poetic form in Toda to be strictly three syllables [4]. Within OT, violation and the strict domination of OT constraints are capable of accounting for the vowel epenthesis in Toda songs. Theoretical insights from OT enrich our understanding not only of Toda phonology but also of its metric rules. More generally, OT is shown in this study to be a framework which manages to give meaningful clarification of complex and specific literary-linguistic interaction patterns found in a given language.
Highlights
Epenthesis refers to the insertion of a segment into a word in a position in which no segment was formerly present [5]
Dealing with songs and poetry is distinctly different from prose, as poetry commonly refers to the artistic discourse that is divided into lines and the internal organisation of lines is governed by linguistic factors such as meter, parallelism or both (Fabb and Halle [10]:1, Hanson and Kiparsky [13]:289)
This paper has mainly focused on linguistics, more precisely phonology, as well as the poetic properties of one genre of song poetry in the Toda language
Summary
Epenthesis refers to the insertion of a segment into a word in a position in which no segment was formerly present [5]. The English song 'The Umbrella Man' is an illustration of this phenomenon, where the meter requires the word 'umbrella' to be four syllables, um-buh-rel-la, 'any umbrellas' has the meter ány úmberéllas [6]. This study aims to investigate vowel epenthesis in Toda songs under an Optimality Theory (OT)-based poetic meter rather than prose-based constraints; despite the claimed distinctions between the two systems, the formalism still remains the same. To achieve this aim, two questions are addressed. The fourth section presents the grammar of vowel epenthesis in Toda songs through a unified set of OT constraints, while the conclusion, presented in the final section, provides a summary of the study and its findings
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