Which, if any, of the world's languages have both the following features?
- Syllable-initial vowels are disallowed; all syllables must begin with a consonant.
- There is no glottal stop phoneme.
Asked
Active
Viewed 641 times
6
TKR
- 10,893
- 26
- 60
2 Answers
2
As reported by Lin (1977) (Phonology 14:403-436), there is no glottal stop and no initial vowels in Piro. If you can get Thargari Phonology and Morphology (T. Klokeid 1969, Pac. Ling. Series B #12), you can confirm or deny whether that too is an example.
user6726
- 83,066
- 4
- 63
- 181
-
So the language is Thargari? You might want to make that more clear in your first sentence. Doing a google search came up with this link which supports that all syllables in Thargary have an onset: https://books.google.com/books?id=unyn2D4Gy4IC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=Thargari&source=bl&ots=LoaVycX8Zx&sig=_V7nrwfSkzP9zNXe7thV-Iu_NBE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aTaOVYbdOJGxogSQ1LnADg&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Thargari&f=false – brass tacks Jun 27 '15 at 05:38
-
1I have the publication by Terry Klokeid and can confirm that Tharrkari (the spelling preferred by the people) syllables are all C initial. Also, it does not have glottal stop (few languages do in Western Australia). – Gaston Ümlaut Jun 27 '15 at 14:06
-
But I'm sure there are plenty of other languages that require C initial syllables and don't have glottal stop, probably many such in Australia. – Gaston Ümlaut Jun 27 '15 at 14:07
-
I wonder if it has homorganic glide + vowel syllables though, like /ji/ and /wu/. Those seem to occur in Dyirbal, another Australian language that is said to have no syllable-initial vowels. – brass tacks Feb 20 '18 at 05:57
2
There's an Australian language Lardil that has both of the features the OP is asking for:
- there's no phonemic glottal stop, in fact, there are no glottal consonants
- each syllable starts with a consonant (there may be exceptions, but I don't think there are any in Lardil)
Mellifluous
- 1,389
- 1
- 7
- 29