Word in Yalaku

Abstract

This chapter focuses on phonological and grammatical word in Yalaku, a minority language from the Ndu family in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The phonological word in Yalaku is characterized by one single stress, and a number of phonological processes, including voicing of stops and the post-alveolar affricate, and k-fortition word-internally. The usual length of a phonological word is two syllables. One grammatical word corresponds to two or more phonological words in case of echo-compounds, nominal compounds, serial verb constructions, and full reduplication of non-cohering type. Cohering reduplication which produces one phonological word. One phonological word corresponds to more than one grammatical word if it contains clitics. All clitics in Yalaku can occur as independent phonological words if in focus. Monosyllabic third person cross-referencing markers are anticipatory clitics which form one phonological word with the constituent preceding their host, unless that constituent contains three syllables or more.