LING 330 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: Homorganic Consonant, Scottish Gaelic, Downstep
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If we apply our notions of sonority to japanese, we can readily divide words into syllables. Syllables should all sort of occupy a timing slot (pulses of energy that resemble a beat or a rhythm) Syllables have the general pattern of cv (consonant vowel), with an optional consonant in the coda. Note that / / and a homorganic obstruent are the only permissible syllable codas. A syllable nucleus may branch: /o / (/oo/), /ai/, /i / (/ii/). Japanese has, however, traditionally recognized a unit called the mora, rather than the syllable. The difference between syllables and mora is that a consonant in the coda forms a mora of its own, and a branching nucleus forms two mora. The words from the list above a given again below, this time divided into mora: Even though they have the same amount of syllable, one word can be longer to pronounce than another if this words has more moras than the other.
