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Highly Complex Syllable Structure: A Typological Study Of Its Phonological Characteristics And Diachronic Development, Shelece Easterday

Linguistics ETDs

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language. Strong cross-linguistic tendencies in syllable size and shape are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure, a type which is also privileged in abstract models of the syllable. Syllable patterns such as those found in Itelmen qsaɬtxt͡ʃ ‘follow!’ and Tashlhiyt tsskʃftstt ‘you dried it (f)’ are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized. This dissertation is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that …