See the difference between Japanese syllable and Japanese mora When you study in the best institute for Japanese language in Delhi NCR, you know that most treatments of Japanese phonology fail to distinguish between syllable and mora.
The mora concept arises in languages which make a distinction between long and short syllables, e. Japanese, Classical Latin, Classical Greek.
A mora is a rhythmical unit of which short syllables have one and long syllables have two. The vowels which lenghten are the following:. The vowels spelled with a 'circonflexe accent' cf.
I call these vowels the 'lengthening vowels'3. The second kind of optional lengthening is consonant lengthening. Prefinal syllable lengthening in the phenomization. Facts about the French final syllables. In this section we will examine the facts on obligatory lengthening. Whether case i or ii obtains depends on two factors:.
Open final syllables, v. For French final open syllables, no lengthening is observed. In the following examples, the final vowels in the phonemicized forms are short. If a French word ends in a syllable closed by only one consonant, we observe the lengthening of the consonant or the. There are six cases. First, we will look at French words ending in an obstruent. Voiceless obstruents.
The final voiceless obstruent of a French word is geminated in the phonemicization. When a final voiceless plosive is precede by a lengthening vowel, either the plosive or the preceding vowel is long in the phonemicized form:.
When a final syllable is closed by a voiced fricative, the. In French, vowels are phonetically lengthened when they appear in a prepausal syllable, and the lengthening is particularly remarkable in two cases:. Long vowels of this type are always phonemicized as long vowels; cf.
The lengthening of this second type is only reflected in phonemicizations in the case of the oral vowels. Voiced plosives or nasal stops. If the final consonant is a voiced plosive or a nasal stop, both types of lengthening are possible.
Consequently, when it precedes a nasal stop, it becomes the first half of a geminate nasal stop. A process of lengthening similar to those above is observed for French words ending in an obstruent-liquid cluster.
Voiceless obstruent-liquid clusters. Lengthening operates in the same fashion as before a final voiceless obstruent, cf. When a final voiceless obstruent-liquid cluster is preceded by a 'lengthening vowel', either the obstruent or the preceding vowel is long in the phonemicized form.
When a final syllable is closed by a voiced obstruent- liquid cluster, the vowel before the obstruent is lengthened. No lengthening for French word-final syllables closed by a consonant cluster other than OL. Lengthening does not occur for word-final syllables closed by any cluster other than one comprised of an obstruent followed by a liquid:. I will propose mechanisms governing these phenomena in Section 4.
Before doing that, it is helpful to make a few remarks concerning a limitation on the number of heavy syllables that appear in phonemicized forms and the role of morpheme boundaries in French words. Remarks on number of heavy syllables in the phonemicization and the role of morpheme boundary in French words. A limitation on the number of heavy syllables in the phonemicized forms. Let us consider the following examples.
The French lui is a 'lengthening vowel'; its phonemicization is optionally a long vowel. In 24 , the Japanese rendition of French lui is a long vowel for some informants, a short one for others, and either for the rest.
On the other hand, in 25 the rendition of French lui is, in most cases, a short vowel. Note that this 'spelling conscious' type of rendition is often found in loanwords from French, e. We can make the following generalizations based on examples 24 and 25 :.
There are two systematic exceptions to generalizations a and b. First, regardless of their position, the French nasalized vowels always yield heavy rimes consisting of a Japanese oral vowel followed by a moraic nasal, e.
The role of morpheme boundaries in French words. Apparent counter-examples to the generalization about the number and the position of heavy syllables presented above are explained by the presence of morpheme boundaries in French words. When a morpheme preceding one of the suffixes ends in a consonant or in an OL cluster, the phonemicized form of its last syllable contains a heavy syllable of the corresponding rime. Not all morphological boundaries in French forms have this lengthening effect. For instance, in the following compounds, lengthening does not appear in the penultimate or antepenultimate syllables of the first morphemes:.
The last two data are drawn from a travel guide book. Our interpretation of these data is that morpheme boundaries are not present in those compounds for the Japanese informants.
Variations in the number of heavy syllables may be found in the phonemicizations of those French forms which are polymorphemic, for in those the number of morphemes changes depending on each speaker's analysis. We may now go on to propose mechanisms of phonemicization, focusing on the obligatory lengthening of certain syllables. Mechanisms of lengthening. Let us first recapitulate the important facts:.
Lengthening may affect either a vowel or consonant. I propose two mechanisms of phonemicization, Ml and M2. Ml is a general mechanism which is valid for all the positions in French words, while M2 only deals with the final syllable of French words and in some cases creates lengthened syllables in the phonemicization.
Ml General mechanism valid for all positions in French. Syllabify the string of French segments:. M2 valid only for the last syllable of a French word : The syllable weight of the last syllable of French words should be respected.
Let us now look into how the mechanisms operate. The examples below illustrate the working of Ml. After a consonant which is not followed by a vowel, Ml necessarily inserts a vowel. It is the only way to syllabify the French phones without suppressing any i , while at the same time respecting the syllable structure of Japanese ii and adding as few segments as possible iii.
M2 does not work for the word-internal syllables. The following French words contain a heavy syllable followed by a light syllable. In those, the syllable weight is not respected in phonemicizations: they are phonemicized as a sequence of three light syllables.
The reason why M2 does not work inside these words is not hard to see: it is that the consonant closing the first syllable of these words is not perceived by Japanese speakers as a coda of the first syllable; instead the first syllable is perceived as an open syllable.
This is due to the limitations of consonant clusters in Japanese: the only possible Japanese clusters are NC homorganic sequences of a nasal stop followed by a plosive and QC geminate obstruents , and the clusters in the words in 32 are.
Consider the French words in 33 below, which have the same consonant-vowel structure as in 32 , but where syllable structure is different. As seen in these examples, the French sequence C V. CCV can be phonemicized as C V. Suppose that Japanese speakers do not hear any difference between the sequences C VC. CV and C V. Once the first syllable of the sequence, C VC. CV, is perceived as an open syllable and syllabified so by Ml, the remainder, the C.
CV by Ml. The Japanese syllabifications of French word-internal closed syllables can be, thus characterized as follows:. M2 works for French final syllables closed by a consonant or by an obstruent-liquid cluster.
In example 35 below, the heavy weight of French final syllables is preserved in their phonemicizations. The first example, I lak I , is a heavy syllable; this syllable weight is preserved in the first syllable of the phonemicization, which is closed by a geminate consonant.
The syllable weight of the second example is also preserved in the first syllable of the phonemicization, this time with a long vowel. The following examples contain word-final heavy syllables closed by an OL cluster, IlitRl and livRl, and M 2 operates on them in the same way as for the examples above: their syllable weight is preserved.
Here, the final liquids do not change the syllable weight of the final syllables. Ml operates alone for other types of final closed syllables. Contrary to the preceding cases, for the types of French word-final syllables other than vc and VOL , M 2 does not operate. Consider example In the word acte, the syUable I akt I contains three segments in its rime: it is a heavy syllable. One may tentatively explain this fact as follows. The syllable containing two segments in the coda is recognized by Japanese speakers as having more than two moras.
Remember that a Japanese syllable can contain at most two moras. It is impossible to syllabify more than two moras within a syllable respecting M2.
Consequently, M2 no longer operates, and Ml operates on its own. Such syllables are actually found in Japanese, but they only occur in two special contexts.
First, the sequence VVQ is found before a suffix, e. Second, some loanwords contain a WN sequence which is probably tautosyllabic:. Ditto with the related LSE question: Is the concept of syllables pronunciation-relevant in languages with mora-based pronunciation? I recently took a phonology course where Mora Theory was briefly mentioned but we didn't go in depth so your question piqued my interest.
I did some light googling and I found this set of lecture notes which I think does a pretty good job explaining it:. Ladefoged in Vance states that "A mora is a unit of timing. Each mora takes about the same length of time to say" p. So, if I am understanding the issue correctly, onsets are not assigned a mora because they do not significantly add to the pronunciation time. That is, the time required to pronounce "ah" and "bah" are not significantly different.
That amount of time is defined as one mora. Incidentally, it would be a good idea to make sure no one else is home before trying this yourself. Now, some things take extra time to pronounce. Long vowels are longer than short vowels. Codas post-vowel consonants take more time to pronounce. Thus, such syllables are 2 moras because the syllable can be divided into two basic units, each taking time to pronounce:. Imagine the government asks a research group to figure out "how much the Lincoln Tunnel gets used by people to enter Manhattan from New Jersey in a hour period".
There are two obvious ways to obtain this measurement; one could count the number of vehicles that enter the tunnel in a hour period, or one could count the number of people riding in the vehicles that enter the tunnel during a hour period. Either metric could be relevant, depending on what the government is trying to focus on.
If they care about factors that contribute to street traffic, then the vehicle-counting metric might be more appropriate. If they are more concerned with the actual population density of Manhattan during the day and how much of it is affected by out-of-towners, the person-counting metric might be more appropriate.
In phonology, syllables are like cars and morae are like people. Every car on the road must contain at least one person the driver , but a car can also contain multiple people. Likewise, every syllable contains minimally one mora, but it may contain two or even three. Certain phonological processes are dependent on syllable count and some are dependent on mora count; some are dependent on both.
Studying Japanese is a great way to become familiar with the concept of a mora. At the risk of stretching the analogy too far, onset consonants, when they are present, are kind of like pets that are riding in the car. They don't get counted as people entering the tunnel! For an example of a process that is sensitive to both the syllable and the mora in Japanese, consider pitch accent assignment.
In the "standard" Japanese dialect, a pitch accent is associated with the initial mora of a syllable.
So with three-syllable words, there are three possible accent patterns for accented words--initial, medial, and final accent of course words can be unaccented as well. It doesn't matter if the syllables are light or heavy. But if the accented syllable is heavy, the high "tone" trying to stay pre-theoretical here of the accent is constrained to associate with the initial mora of the accented syllable.
I hope at least part of this explanation clears things up for you a bit! Let me know if there is anything in particular that is still unclear and I will try to improve my answer.
0コメント