Syllable Structure Research Articles

On the Vowel Epenthesis and Epithesis in Turkish Texts in the Manuscripts of Lithuanian Tatars

Adding a vowel that is not in the original of a word to that word for various reasons is called vowel derivation. There is no morphological reason for vowel derivation and it aims to facilitate the pronunciation. There are three types of vowel derivation: at the beginning of the word, within the word and at the end of the word. The derivation of vowels at the beginning of a word in Turkish is not seen much in standard Turkish and is more common in dialects. Vowel epenthesis is a common phonetic event in standard Turkish. This phonetic event is encountered both in borrowed words and in words of Turkish origin. One of the reasons for the vowel epenthesis in Turkish is to make the borrowed words that do not fit the syllable structure of Turkish fit the syllable this structure and thus to eliminate the difficulty of pronunciation in the borrowed words. As it is known, only some consonant pairs can be found together at the end of words of Turkish origin. For this reason, in words borrowed with consonant pairs that are not suitable for the syllabic structure of Turkish, we come across vowel derivations within the word. This vowel derivation, which first appeared in the spoken language, can also pass into the standard language over time. The vowel epenthesis can also be seen in some Turkish origin words in order to add strength to the meaning. In Turkish, vowel epithesis is not as common as vowel epenthesis. The vowel epithesis is mostly seen in dialects and there are very few examples in standard language. The vowel epithesis is a phonetic event that is more common in some Turkic languages than in Türkiye Turkish. The derivation of vowel at the end of the word, especially seen in borrowed words, provides ease of pronunciation in words of foreign origin that do not fit the sound system of the Turkish language. The vowel epithesis occurs in borrowed words containing consonant pairs that are not suitable for the syllable structure of Turkish, as well as in borrowed words with twin consonants at the end of the word.
 It is seen that examples of vowel epithesis in Turkish texts found in manuscripts of Lithuanian Tatars are more common than in Türkiye Turkish. In particular, the Miraj text and some poems belonging to the Old Anatolian Turkish period, which are among the manuscripts in the “kitab” type, provide us with a rich material on this subject. In these texts, examples of vowel epenthesis and epithesis in borrowed words from Arabic and Persian are used in pairs in an interesting way. In other words, we see that the same borrowed word is used both with vowel epenthesis and epithesis. In this study, events of vowel epenthesis and epithesis in Turkish texts found in manuscripts of Lithuanian Tatars are examined and the reasons for the higher incidence of vowel epithesis in these texts are discussed.

Sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Albeit diverse, human languages exhibit universal structures. A salient example is the syllable, an important structure of language acquisition. The structure of syllables is determined by the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), a linguistic constraint according to which phoneme intensity must increase at onset, reaching a peak at nucleus (vowel), and decline at offset. Such structure generates an intensity pattern with an arch shape. In humans, sensitivity to restrictions imposed by the SSP on syllables appears at birth, raising questions about its emergence. We investigated the biological mechanisms at the foundations of the SSP, testing a nonhuman, non-vocal-learner species with the same language materials used with humans. Rats discriminated well-structured syllables (e.g., pras) from ill-structured ones (e.g., lbug) after being familiarized with syllabic structures conforming to the SSP. In contrast, we did not observe evidence that rats familiarized with syllables that violate such constraint discriminated at test. This research provides the first evidence of sensitivity to the SSP in a nonhuman species, which likely stems from evolutionary-ancient cross-species biological predispositions for natural acoustic patterns. Humans’ early sensitivity to the SSP possibly emerges from general auditory processing that favors sounds depicting an arch-shaped envelope, common amongst animal vocalizations. Ancient sensory mechanisms, responsible for processing vocalizations in the wild, would constitute an entry-gate for human language acquisition.

The Effect of Prefixation on Syllable Structure in Najdi Arabic

This study investigates the effect of prefixation on the syllable and syllabification in Najdi Arabic. It mainly addresses the role of prefixation on the syllable in this variety of Arabic, providing a prosodic representation of it within the context of rule-based phonology. The paper provides a review of the phonological processes that deal with prefixation phenomena in Najdi Arabic, whose domains of application are somewhat subject to syllabification processes and the syllable structure. To achieve this, the paper discusses the three types of prefixation in Najdi Arabic: (a) nominal prefixes, i.e., the definite article /ʔal/ and prepositional prefixes (predominantly fi- ‘in’, and bi- ‘in/at’), (b) the agreement-related prefixes, i.e., verbal prefixes and (c) the adverbial prefix /ʔib-/ ‘with’, which is prefixed to the host noun and changes its grammatical category to an adverb. The results show that each type of prefixation has its own functions, which are essentially related to the type of the host it attaches to. For instance, the prefix /ʔib-/, which is the Najdi Arabic adverbial marker, is a stress-bearing morpheme, given that it is a heavy syllable on its own, which attaches to the initial position at the very beginning of its nominal host.

Epenthesis and vowel intrusion in Central Dhofari Mehri

Abstract The paper discusses epenthesis and vowel intrusion in the Central Dhofari variety of Mehri, one of six endangered Modern South Arabian languages indigenous to southern Arabia. Mehri is spoken by members of the Mahrah tribe in southern Oman, eastern Yemen, parts of southern and eastern Saudi Arabia and in communities in parts of the Gulf and East Africa. The estimated number of Mehri speakers is between 100,000–180,000. Following Hall (2006), this study distinguishes between two types of inserted vowels: epenthetic vowels, which repair illicit syllable structures, and intrusive vowels, which transition between consonants. The paper examines how the properties of epenthetic and intrusive vowels as proposed by Hall relate to Mehri.

GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY-MEDAN ADOLESCENT SLANG WORDS IN DAILY SPEECH

This paper aims at describing and examines the phonological processes of several adolescent slang words of Medan in daily conversation. In this paper, the researcher uses a qualitative descriptive method with a generative phonological approach. The data contained in this study are phonological data that the researcher obtained from slang words that several adolescents in Medan usually use in their daily conversations. In analyzing the data obtained, it was done by collecting data, analyzing the data, making phonological studies, and making the result and discussion. According to the findings in this research, generative phonology might be a valuable technique for examining and comprehending phonological processes used by Medan adolescents in ordinary discourse, which including Assimilation and Syllable Structure(tend to use /?/, /e/ and /o/ vowels, vowel-consonant sound release, the weakening, and mixing of vowels sound).

CLASSIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF SOME TEXTUAL REFLECTING ALEVI- BEKTASHI ORAL TRADITION IN POLITICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONTEXT

Abstract
 First, it should be noted that the Alevi culture was created, transmitted and maintained mainly as an oral discourse. Alevi poetry played the biggest role in this process. In this study on Alevi poetic discourse, cem, poetry, dance, semah, prayer and recitation of hymns, which are an Alevi ritual, will be discussed. The Alevi poetry, which is the creation of Bektaşi, urbanite Alevi poets who used the poetical forms of the classical Ottoman literature, or court literature will be excluded from my discussion. These forms include gazel, kaside, kıt’a, terciibend, terkib-i bend, mersiye etc which follow the form, style and the metric system used mainly by the Medresse educated court poets. Up until now the Alevi-Bektashi people have maintained their beliefs, thoughts, policy, philosophy, traditions and practices through some cultural instruments (muhabbet) which they perform in or out of cem rituals (worship gatherings), such as folk poems, folk songs (nefes, deyiş, duvazimam and so on) and folk dances (semah). Cem rituals have social, educational, cultural and political dimensions as well as their inherent religious dimension. Cem rituals, folk poems and dances change from one region to another. Despite the differences between them, it is believed that their "essence" is same. We can say that the saying "there is one path but a thousand ways" is the major notion in their cosmology. In our research, the belief structure of the Alevi culture and the way of worship are discussed based on the mâni and the koşma. In addition, the syllable structure and meanings of mâni, koşma and deyiş are presented with Turkish and English examples. Alevi ashıks, such as Kaygusuz Abdal, Hatayi and Muhiddin Abdal inserted their pen name in that short poetical form and transformed it into an individual creation. The koşma, may be known by several names, such as deyiş, deme, düvaz imam, mersiye, depending on musical tune it is associated with in the local tradition, social context, the geographic area, other performance components. These word structures and formulas reveal the Alevi cultural structure in religious rituals, music and art. Brief history of the Alevi-Bektashi society, which forms the basis of this belief structure, is also evaluated in our study. The Alevi poetry, which is the creation of the Alevi aşıks, minstrel, played a major role in transmitting the Alevi moral principles, the social and individual behaviors, the history of the Alevi community, the legendary life stories of the Alevi Babas and Dede’s and most importantly, the Alevi religious beliefs and ritual.

Nonword reading by adults who stutter in a transparent orthography

PurposeUsing word- and nonword-reading passages in Kannada, which has a transparent orthography, we attempted to determine (a) whether orthographic differences between English and Kannada may explain the observed differences in stutter rates on nonwords, and (b) whether longer nonwords, like words, incur higher rates of stutters. MethodsStutters are defined as sound or syllable repetitions, sound prolongations, broken words or nonwords (a pause within a word or nonword), abnormal pauses, and intrusive vowel-like sounds. Twenty-six persons, who stutter, read the word and nonword passages. The nonwords were created by changing the first syllable of each word; otherwise words and nonwords were equivalent in length and syllable structure. Stutters were counted from audio-recordings and statistically analyzed. ResultsPWS stuttered on words in varying amounts and in significantly larger amounts on nonwords. Stutter frequency increased roughly in proportion to the increase in the length of phonological words (previously known) and nonwords (reported for the first time here). ConclusionThe results cannot be attributed to the difficulty of pronouncing nonwords because Kannada orthography has a one-to-one relationship between the written and spoken forms of words. Speech production is a multi-stage process consisting of ideation, lemma selection, phonological word creation, and the articulatory planning and execution. Because nonwords lack meaning and clearly identifiable part of speech, it appears that stutters arise late in the speech production process at the phonological word formation and articulatory planning stages. Meaning, lexicality, and morphosyntax may not contribute significantly to the occurrence of stutters.

Constraints Interaction in the Syllabification in Olusuba

This paper analyses the syllable structure of Olusuba. In the syllabification in Olusuba, just as in other languages, a principle of well-formedness is factored in by the speakers of the language through their use of brain faculties responsible for language formation and use. Well-formedness is understood to be a by-product of competing universal constraints – the constraints outdo their counterparts in the ranking, which is language specific, in the formation of an output. The job of constraint is, therefore, is to block all except the correct output. My analysis of syllabification in Olusuba is couched within the constraint interaction, a tenet of the Optimality Theory (OT) by Prince and Smolensky (2004). Data for analysis was collected through audio-recording of continuous speeches in natural settings. Audio-recorded speeches were then played back and transcribed using phonemic mode of transcription. From the transcript a corpus construct was made. The construct was a list of Olusuba words. Three native speakers of Olusuba were at different moments instructed to read naturally the words constituting the corpus construct by taking a breath word after word. The analysis of the data was descriptively done within the framework of OT’s principle of well-formedness which is grounded on constraint interaction. The findings of this study indicate that other than the universal syllable structure CV, Olusuba displays other syllable patterns formed from competing Universal Grammar (UG) representational constraints. Findings for this study give an insight to the morphophonological structure of Olusuba words; enable linguists understand internal structure of Olusuba syllables and enlighten linguists on phonotactic constraints behind syllabification of Olusuba words.

Analisis Deret Vokal Dan Deret Konsonan Dalam Buku "Senja Di Siliwangi"

Vowel series and consonant series are concepts in phonology that are important in Indonesian. Vowel series and consonant series affect the structure of syllables in Indonesian. Vowel series consist of vowels that line up in two different syllables, while consonant series consist of a combination of two consonants found on different syllables, albeit side by side. Both of these concepts are important to learn in Indonesian phonology learning because they can help understand the structure of syllables and phenomena such as consonant clusters and clusters. In addition, research on vowel series and consonant series in Indonesian can help enrich knowledge about Indonesian and improve Indonesian learning in the future. However, the findings may provide a deeper understanding of the structure of syllables in Indonesian, the use of language in literary works, and its impact on artistic expression and meaning in poetry. Implications of these findings could include the development of phonological theories Indonesian, the development of better Indonesian teaching guidelines, and broader application in literature and linguistics.

Structure and Types of Pashto Syllable

The syllable is the phonological element that plays a vital role in the formation of the word. A complete and standard syllable consists of the Onset, Nucleus, and Coda, but at the same time, the Onset or Coda part of the syllable can also fall down. No syllable can be constructed without Nucleus and vowel sounds. The vowel in the syllable structure has as much value as the syllable has in the word formation. These vowels play a fundamental role in the syllable’s distribution and types. This article explores the intricate structure and various types of syllables found in the Pashto language, primarily spoken in Afghanistan. Syllables play a fundamental role in linguistic analysis, as they constitute the building blocks of words and affect the rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns in speech.
 The findings of this study contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the Pashto language's syllable structure, shedding light on its unique phonological features. This knowledge holds significance for various fields, including linguistics, language teaching, and speech pathology, enabling researchers and language professionals to better analyze and comprehend the complexities of Pashto syllables.

Exploring The Phonological Words And Syllable Analysis

This article discusses phonology and syllables in the context of language. Phonology is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds in language and the way they are organized, whereas syllables are the basic units in spoken language that form the basic structure of words. In this article, we explore the phonological words and syllable analysis, and the importance of understanding these concepts. In the phonological world, sounds in a language are categorized based on phonological characteristics such as voicing, place and manner of pronunciation, and others. This helps us understand how sounds are organized and combined in language to form meaningful meanings. In addition, the study of phonological worlds helps identify similarities and differences between languages ??and understand the basic structure of sounds in a given language. The syllable, as the core unit in spoken language, consists of the onset, nucleus, and coda. Syllable analysis helps us understand patterns and rules in the formation of words as well as the rhythm and phonotactics of language. In syllable analysis, we separate words into syllables and study the common syllable structures in that language. An understanding of syllables also has practical implications in language learning, speech therapy, and teaching language skills. Phonological and syllable analysis methods involve identifying the sounds of a language, analyzing syllable structures, and a comparative approach to comparison with other languages. Understanding these concepts is important in gaining a broader understanding of sound systems in language and how they affect human communication. Thus, this article illustrates the importance of phonological and syllable studies in understanding language structure, highlights the analytical methods used, and demonstrates implications and practical application of this knowledge in the context of language learning, speech therapy, and teaching language skills.

The Syllable Structure and Re-syllabification in Kalhouri Spoken in Khanaqin with reference to English

The Syllable Structure and Re-syllabification in Kalhouri Spoken in Khanaqin with reference to English

Supremacy of suprasegmentals in Arabic phonology: Evidence from malapropisms

Speech errors are an important source of information to understand language processing and production. Earlier research focused on different types of errors including semantic and phonological errors while malapropisms, which refer to slips of the tongue involving whole word substitutions that share phonological similarities but are not related semantically, have not received adequate attention in the Arabic language. Drawing on malapropisms in Jordanian Arabic, we bring evidence on the supremacy of suprasegmental phonological aspects in Arabic phonology. This is unexpected as stress in Arabic is non-phonemic and fully predictable, besides Arabic rhythm is much less stress-timed than that of Germanic languages. Data was collected from spontaneous speech over a period of three years. Results showed that malapropisms share the primary stress position, the number of syllables and the word rhythmic pattern with the target words. To a lesser degree, the target and the error share the same rime and initial segments. Findings suggest that suprasegmental features are very crucial in Arabic phonology, like in Indo-European languages. Evidence suggests that formal similarity that is based on the syllabic and metrical structure of words plays a significant role in language processing and the organization of the mental lexicon in Arabic, which suggests that this is a language universal. Furthermore, our findings do not agree with earlier claims that Arabic has a flat syllabic structure. Rather, evidence suggests that Arabic, like English, has a hierarchical syllable structure, which seems to represent another language universal. More research on other Arabic dialects is recommended to corroborate these findings. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. * Corresponding author: Mohammed Nour Abu Guba, 0000-0002-5007-6439 mabu-gub@sharjah.ac.ae

The phonology of Atchan

AbstractAtchan is a Kwa language spoken by approximately 150,000 people in and around Abidjan in southern Côte d’Ivoire. In this paper, I describe aspects of the phonology of Atchan, including its consonant and vowel inventory, syllable structure, patterns of nasalisation, and lexical and grammatical tone. I provide examples from primary data collected in collaboration with native speakers of Atchan. This article offers the first comprehensive sketch of Atchan phonology in the literature.

Morphological effects on Pali gemination: A preliminary study

Around the turn of the 20th century (Childers, 1879; Müller, 1884; Whitney, 1889; Gray, 1899; Duroiselle, 1906), neogrammarians began studying the Pali language and its grammar. One area of particular interest was the phonological process of assimilation. Pali evidences both progressive and regressive assimilation and it is generally the case that a consonant geminate is formed (Krishnaswamy, et al., 2019). Recent studies (Junghare, 1979; Suzuki, 2002a,b; Gupta, 2003; Schmeiser, 2008; Dutta, 2017) have attempted to explain base-medial consonant gemination in phonological terms.
 Though these accounts have furthered our understanding of Pali base-medial consonant gemination, very few studies have considered morphological effects on Pali gemination. The current study, though exploratory in nature, suggests that a problem arises in phonological analyses of Pali geminates in that Pali words evidence different cluster realizations based on morphological factors. In short, the study analyzes the effects of affixes on Pali gemination and suggests that an explanation based solely on syllable structure or sonority is insufficient and calls for further research.

Sound of Quantitative Metres in Medieval Hebrew Poetry

Abstract The conventional view of quantitative metres in medieval Hispano-Hebrew poetry confuses vowels and syllables. This is because it was syllable structure, rather than vowel typology, that produced the quantitative oppositions. Vocalic shewa was not a furtive but a regular short vowel; its syllable was light because it was not closed by a consonant. Heavy syllables were formed by closing consonants, replaceable by a long vowel, as in Arabic and other languages. Arabic metres could be used in Hebrew with no modification of their phonological basis. However, the quantitative prosody of Arabic poetry was the same as in Qurʾānic recitation, whereas its application to Hebrew contradicted the accentual prosody of the Bible. This appears to be the reason for the controversy surrounding the introduction of Arabic metrics into Hebrew poetry. Quantitative metres require only the focus on the articulatory structures to become audible. Musical durations and accents can corroborate the metre, but they can also be non-related without compromising metre perception.

The role of probability and duration in perception of speech sounds

When listeners are hearing sounds in the speech signal and have not yet heard enough acoustic cues to know what a sound is, they might predict the upcoming sound based on likelihood in the language or likelihood of occurrence after the preceding sound (overall and conditional probability of sounds). A related factor may be how long the sound goes on: listeners might be more able to identify sounds that go on longer because they have more time to hear the acoustic cues. However, additional duration may only be useful to listeners if it contains new acoustic cues (acoustic change). This paper investigates whether these factors have a role in how listeners perceive or predict sounds. This study presents further analysis of the perception data collected by the English Diphones project (Warner et al., 2014). The results show that listeners predict upcoming phonemes based on a guessing strategy, not based on lexical probability, with a small influence of syllable structure. Longer duration in itself does not produce better identification, but rather plays a role when important acoustic changes occur within the additional duration. The present study suggests that listeners use acoustic information rather than probability, and that they are sensitive to dynamic changes in spectral structure.

A distributional analysis of vowel quantity in a corpus of Latin texts

Abstract The paper examines the relationship between vowel quantity, syllable structure and lexical stress in Latin through a quantitative analysis carried out on a corpus of literary texts taken from Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares and Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis. Each word of the corpus was split into syllables and phonemes. Then, the corpus was annotated with phonological and prosodic information pertaining to vowel length, syllable structure, stress and word length. Finally, the data collected were analyzed at different levels. The results are discussed in light of the findings of a previous analysis carried out on dictionary entries, confirming a close correlation between syllable structure and lexical stress, since the great majority of stressed syllables are heavy both in the literary corpus and in the dictionary. Moreover, long vowels are more frequently found in open and stressed syllables, particularly in paroxytones. The data suggest that the process leading to the loss of vowel quantity was already active (at least in some strata of Roman society) in the Latin of the Classical age, since a prosodic template similar to that occurring in many Romance developments emerges even in literary Latin texts.

Emerging grammars in contemporary Yoruba phonology

AbstractThis article provides a description and an Optimality Theory (OT) analysis of contact-induced changes and variation in contemporary Yoruba syllable structure. The article claims that a major diachronic change has occurred in the syllable structure of Yoruba phonology due to its continued contact with English, resulting in the invention, preservation, and hypercorrection of clusters and codas. I characterize this change in terms of OT constraint re-ranking (Miglio and Moren 2003) and assess the resulting synchronic variation against the indexed constraint approach of Itô and Mester (1995a, b, 1999), the ranked-winners approach of Coetzee (2004), the partial-order co-phonology of Anttila (1997), and the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model of Goldwater and Johnson (2003). I show that none of these approaches is able to account independently for the categorical, gradient, and lexically conditioned variation that characterize the contemporary Yoruba syllable structure, but rather that a MaxEnt model augmented with lexical indexation is the most economical model that fits the Yoruba data accurately.

Morphophonological realisation on inflected verbal roots with initial vowel sounds in Sepedi

In instances where verbs that start with vowel sounds and a vowel prefix is attached, the hiatus is repaired through resyllabification, i.e. the manifestation of an initial underlying sound called a glottal catch. This sound fills the onset position of vowel initial verbs in Sepedi, and is responsible for the drastic alternation when the verb comes into contact with a reflexive prefix or an object concord. This article examines the effect of morphophonological realisation on inflected verbal roots with initial vowel sounds in Sepedi. The data collected through documents and semi-structured interviews shows that the glottal catch makes verbs follow the CV syllable pattern. The vowel reflexive prefix which threatens to create a hiatus is repaired through epenthesis by adding a sound to the interior of a word (at the beginning of prosthesis). This repair strategy ensures that the CV syllable structure of Sepedi is maintained. This article provides new data that offers innovative understanding of Sepedi on the concepts such as epenthesis and hiatus, relating to alternations in morphophonological environments using the optimality theory.