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3 - Syllables and Moras

from Part I - Lower Prosodic Constituents: Moras, Syllables, Feet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2025

Caroline Féry
Affiliation:
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
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Summary

Chapter 3 introduces lower-level constituents of the prosodic hierarchy – mora and syllable. The syllable structure is discussed from different perspectives: the role played by the sonority hierarchy and the phonotactic restrictions it imposes on sequences of segments in the syllable; the individual positions such as onset, nucleus, coda as well as prefix and appendix; and the weight of individual segments expressed in moras, leading to relative weight of the syllable itself. It is shown that the number of segments allowed in each position is strictly fulfilled. As for the weight properties of syllables, lax vowels are monomoraic, tense vowels are bimoraic and schwa is non-moraic. The syllable itself can be non-moraic, bimoraic or trimoraic. The chapter ends with a detailed proposal on how ranked OT constraints can account for the sonority sequencing among the segments as well as the restrictions observed in the number of segments that can fill the different syllable constituents. The second part of the OT analysis focuses on the moraic constituency of the segments of a syllable.

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Chapter
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German Phonology
An Optimality-Theoretic Approach
, pp. 77 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Syllables and Moras
  • Caroline Féry, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
  • Book: German Phonology
  • Online publication: 04 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009277976.004
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  • Syllables and Moras
  • Caroline Féry, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
  • Book: German Phonology
  • Online publication: 04 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009277976.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Syllables and Moras
  • Caroline Féry, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
  • Book: German Phonology
  • Online publication: 04 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009277976.004
Available formats
×