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UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report

Title
Does Gokana Really Have No Syllables? (Or: What's So Great About Being Universal?)

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https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9b48r86x

Journal
UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report, 6(6)

Author
Hyman, Larry M

Publication Date
2010

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 UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2010)

Does Gokana Really Have No Syllables?

(Or: What’s So Great About Being Universal?)
Larry M. Hyman
University of California, Berkeley

May, 2010

ABSTRACT

Over 25 years ago, Hyman (1983, 1985) made the claim that Gokana, an Ogoni (Niger-Congo)
language of Nigeria, does not organise its consonants and vowels into syllables. This was a
radical and in principle non-welcome position, given the centrality of the syllable in almost all
phonological work at the time. Still, as Richard Hayward pointed out many years later, the
extensive treatment of Gokana largely went unnoticed:

Hyman's account of the Nigerian language Gokana and in particular his well-argued claim
that Gokana represents a case where invocation of the syllable buys nothing insightful for
explaining the phonology of the language should have disturbed profoundly the settled
orthodoxy surrounding the universality of the syllable. That a vowel (the quintessential
syllable nucleus) is not guaranteed syllable membership is a very strong proposal, but one
has little sense that it has attracted overmuch comment.… In my view it would be
unfortunate if Gokana were to be regarded simply as an interesting oddity, rather than as
the limiting case in a clinal situation in which many languages may participate to some
degree in the course of their phonologies. (Hayward 1997:78)

While there was almost no response to the claim of no syllables in Gokana, the proposal of
Hyman (1983, 1985) to establish moras as a central building block in phonology did gain
currency, and was particularly welcome by specialists of Japanese, long viewed as exclusively
moraic in its prosodic structure. Since that time work on the syllable has gone in opposite
directions: While Kubozono (1999, 2003) has presented evidence that the syllable may in fact
play a role in Japanese, Steriade (1999) and Blevins (2003) have argued that the syllable is less
needed elsewhere, e.g. to account for phonotactic constraints and perhaps certain rhythmic
effects (Steriade 2009). It seems that the status of the syllable is thus once again up for grabs, as
has been the case in its rocky "on-again, off-again" past.
In this paper I take a new look at the Gokana facts and the original claim to ask the
question in my title, motivated in part by overlooked (possibly ambiguous) evidence for the
syllable in Gokana. The paper will end by situating the issue within the context of recent
discussions of universals vs. diversity (Evans & Levinson 2009), with my claim that English and
Gokana are at the opposite ends of the “clinal situation” which Hayward suspected in the above
quote.*

*
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of California, Berkeley, the Laboratoire
Dynamique du Langage (Lyon), and at the Queen Mary University of London Workshop on Tones and
Prosodic Constituents (March 25-6, 2010).

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1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to take a new look at Gokana, the only language which has been
explicitly claimed to lack syllable structure entirely (Hyman 1983, 1985). As the Hayward
(1997) quote in the above abstract makes clear, the Gokana case has, with few exceptions (e.g.
Blevins 1995:236, Broselow 1995:202), largely gone unnoticed. This may seem surprising, given
that most researchers assume the syllable to be a building block in all languages, a
psycholinguistic reality which is phonetically grounded in articulation and/or perception and
supported by experimental evidence, language acquisition, and orthographies (see, for example,
the collection of papers in Cairns & Raimey (2010). Given recent evidence that the syllable may
be less implicated in accounting for phonotactics (Steriade 1999, Blevins 2003) and rhythmic
effects (Steriade 2009) than previously believed, the question naturally arises as to what the
remaining status is of the syllable: Where is it needed vs. not needed? Can it be completely
absent, and, if so, does some other structure take its place? In this paper I have two goals. First, I
reexamine the same and additional evidence and present an overlooked argument for the syllable
in Gokana, which although ambiguous, may be welcome by those who insist on the universal
status of the syllable. Second, I situate the Gokana material within the context of recent
discussions of universals vs. diversity (Evans & Levinson 2009). I will suggest that the Gokana
situation makes perfect sense once we recognise the highly theory-dependent interpretation of
linguistic universals in general and the property-driven approach we should take to phonological
typology in particular.
The paper is organized as follows. In §2 I will address some general issues of theory and
interpretation as concerns the syllable. §3 then presents the case for no syllables in Gokana,
based on Hyman (1983, 1985). Potential evidence for the syllable in Gokana is then presented in
§4, followed by discussion in §5 and further implications in the conclusion in §6.

2. Theory, interpretation, and the syllable

I begin with an observation: It is amazing how many different views have been taken on the
syllable over the past 100 years or so. This includes:

(1) a. whether the syllable exists or not

b. what the syllable is (phonetic vs. phonological, articulatory vs. acoustic, abstract)
c. what the syllable can (vs. cannot) do
d. how syllable structure should be represented (flat vs. hierarchical, slots vs. moras,
iterations of CV only, maximally CVX etc.)
e. how syllabification should be implemented (sonority- vs. edge-based, lexical vs.
postlexical etc.)
f. what is universal vs. language-specific

While other linguistic constructs such as the morpheme, word or sentence have had their own
definitional and analytical problems, none has had such a “checkered” past: At one end of the
spectrum, various universal claims have been made for the syllable such as those in (2).

(2) claim alleged counter-example

a. All languages have syllables Gokana Hyman (1983, 1985)

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b. All languages have CV syllables W. Arrernte Breen & Pensalfini (1999)

c. All segments belong to a syllable Bella Coola Bagemihl (1991)
Piro Lin (1997)
d. Syllabification is always Barra Gaelic Kenstowicz & Kisseberth (1979)
predictable English Bloomfield (1933), Blevins (1995)

Some of the few alleged counterexamples are listed to the right. At the other end of the spectrum,
in the early generative phonology era, the syllable was claimed either not to exist or to be totally
redundant and not necessary (Kohler 1966). How can it be that some scholars assume that
syllables are universal, restricted to CV in all languages (Lowenstamm 1996), or are subject to a
maximal CVX syllable structure (Duanmu 2008), while still others deny the syllable’s
appropriateness in some or all of phonological analysis?
The problem is that the above claims are necessarily theory-dependent. Consider the claim
in (2d) that syllabification is always predictable:

“One argument that has been raised against phonological syllables is that, unlike segments,
the location of a syllable boundary within a morpheme can never be phonemic. That is, two
morphemes such as /a$pla/ and /ap$la/ cannot differ only in syllable structure.” (Hyman
1975:192)

Although oft-repeated (Clements 1986:318, Hayes 1989:260, Steriade 1999:224, McCarthy

2003:10, Blevins 2004:232, etc.), care must be taken to interpret exactly what the nature of the
claim is: Is (2d) a DESCRIPTIVE claim stating that an underlying (surface?) contrast between
monomorphemic a.pla and ap.la is not possible, or is it an ANALYTIC claim stating that any such
contrast, if attested, would have to be formalised other than by contrastive syllable structure? In
the first case one is making the empirical claim that an identical intervocalic /pl/ sequence could
not have two sets of properties within different morphemes. In the second case, one is making
the formal claim that if two such sets of properties did exist, they would not be analyzed as a
difference in syllabification. Rather, some other representation or device would necessarily be
appealed to.
This, in turn, raises the question of which devices one would be willing to invoke to
“explain away” apparent counterexamples to (2d). Marking one of the syllabifications as
exceptional, e.g. /apla/ vs. /ap.la/, would clearly violate (2d). One might therefore instead set up
an abstract contrast between geminate and single consonants, i.e. /apla/ (→ a.pla) vs. /appla/,
which first syllabifies as ap.pla and then undergoes degemination to become ap.la. A variant of
this analysis could be an empty C slot, i.e. /apla/ vs. /apCla/. Alternatively, one might posit a
ghost V slot whereby /apla/ → a.pla vs. /apVla/ which would first become a.pV.la then ap.la.
The question is not only whether such analytic moves are motivated, butt whether one or another
of them violates the spirit of (2d). Does an extraneous C or V slot effectively undermine the
basic point, that we should be able to predict syllabification within morphemes?
Steriade (1999:224) proposes that the absence of such syllabification contrasts may have a
functional basis. Citing the absence of a contrast between monomorphemic as.ka and a.ska,
Steriade suggests that there would be insufficient perceptual cues to signal such a contrast. Note,
first, that such contrasts are possible across morphemes and words, e.g. my space vs. mice pace,
where timing and aspiration differences at least potentially disambiguate the two. Returning to
/apla/, if one were to combine English aspiration with Icelandic open-syllable lengthening

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(Vennemann 1972), the surface contrast would be between [a:.pHla] and [ap.la], which we can
assume to be quite sufficiently distinct.
If we turn to other phenomena we see that the issue is not so much one of perceptibility, or
even CC syllabification, but rather whether specific theories allow underlying syllabification or
not. The contrasts in (3), all of which are attested, would be as much a problem for such theories
as a contrast between /a.pla/ and /ap.la/:

(3) unpredictable contrast “solutions”

a. V syllabification ai vs. a.i glide vs. vowel: /ay/ vs. /ai/
ghost C: /ai/ vs. /aCi/
b. syllabicity of G vs. V: yu vs. iw underlying C vs. V slots, or [±cons]
c. secondary stress: óbjèct [ábdZE$kt] diacritic accent on object
súbject [s√@bdZˆkt] underlying /E/ vs. /ˆ/
(but cf. objéct, subjéct, both with [E])

Again we must ask whether the proposed “solutions” are in the spirit of (2d). The case of (3c) is
particularly pertinent. If one assumes that stress is a property of syllables, and if unpredictable
stress must be indicated lexically, diacritic accents and other such indications necessarily mark
syllable properties (Inkelas 1995:295) and are hence not in the spirit of (2d).1 Citing the near-
minimal pair: Ida [áyd√] vs. Aïda [a.íy.d√], Blevins (1995:221) writes:

“... in the general case syllable structure is not present in underlying representations.... For
exceptional forms like [/a.íy.da] we can assume that minimal structure is specified in the
lexicon.”

However, in a later work, she writes: “... syllabifications within a given language are never
contrastive” (Blevins 2004:232). While not specifically talking about syllables, Bloomfield
(1933:121) assumes representations that make the syllabicity of sonorants unpredictable:

“Whether a sonant in any word is syllabic or non-syllabic, is determined in different ways

in different languages. If the syllabic or non-syllabic character of a sonant depends entirely
upon the surrounding phonemes (as in bird vs. red), then the difference is not distinctive....
In many cases, however, the syllabic or non-syllabic character of the sonant is determined
arbitrarily, and constitutes a phonemic difference. Thus, in stirring [»str`iN] the [r] is
syllabic, but in string [»striN] it is non-syllabic; in the second syllable of pattern [»pEtr`n] the
[r] is syllabic, and the [n] is non-syllabic, but in the second syllable of patron [»pejtrn`] the
[r] is non-syllabic and the [n] is syllabic.” (Bloomfield 1933:121)

Here we directly observe the theory-dependence issue and the importance of agreeing on the
analysis. We can ignore Bloomfield’s first pair of examples, since stirring is bimorphemic, but
1
The same need for lexical syllabification can be made concerning concerning unpredictable tone, if the
tone-bearing unit is the syllable: “...if syllables were allowed to bear features [i.e. tone], they would be the
only feature-bearing units whose extension was completely predictable by an algorithm referring to other
linguistic units.” (Leben 1980[1973]:192).

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the fact that he represents pattern vs. patron with phonemic syllabic sonorants, rather than with
schwas, i.e. /pQt´rn/ vs. /petr´n/, in more modern terms would require lexical indications of
syllabification.
The picture which emerges is not entirely clear. The possibilities seem to be those in (4).

(4) a. no syllabification in underlying representations (i.e. morphemes cannot contrast in

syllabification)
b. syllabification in underlying representations only in exceptions
c. syllabification in underlying representations only where not “predictable”
d. syllabification in underlying representations even if predictable

What I hope to have shown is how difficult it is to maintain a coherent position across platforms:
To evaluate any of the claims in (2) one must also know what the theoretical assumptions are, as
well as what one would be willing to consider as a counterexample. It is with this indeterminacy
that we now consider the perhaps more radical claim of no syllables in Gokana.

3. No Syllables in Gokana

In §2 we went through a number of universal claims that have been made about syllables in (2)
and considered (2d), the claim that syllabification is always predictable, in some detail. A
number of potential problematic cases were briefly mentioned as well as different moves one
could take to avoid violation of (2d). Some of these were judged either questionable or not in the
spirit of (2d), but not everyone would necessarily agree. Either way, one should ask how good a
universal is if it is so easy to “accommodate” it with representations such as in (3)? In this
section I recapitulate the case for no syllables in Gokana, a Cross-River Niger-Congo language
of the Ogoni subgroup spoken in Nigeria.2 The meta-theoretical question we face in this context
is: What would it take to convince us that a language does not have syllables? Hyman (1983,
1985) argued that such a case is to be found in Gokana, which organises its phonology
exclusively around moras (“weight units”). As an introduction to the problem, consider the
sentence in (5a).

(5) a. mEº@E@º Eº$ kç# m#m$ kE#ºEº$Eº$Eº$Eº#E@º ‘whoi said I woke himi up?’ ( 0 = nasalization)
b. kEºEº + E$º + E$º + Eº + E@º < / kEE + È + ÈÈ + ´EE + É /
wake -CAUS -LOG -3SG -FOC [+nasal]

As seen, the utterance ends in six lengths of [E)]. (5b) shows that that the six surface lengths
derive from eight underlying vocalic moras: both /ÈÈ/ ‘logophoric’ and /´EE/ ‘3sg. object’
undergo a rule which shortens a geminate vowel after another vowel (see (14b) below).3 The

2
The material presented in this study is based on the speech of Godwin Zoranen, who served as linguistic
consultant for two field methods courses in the early 1980s at the University of Southern California, as
well as beyond. I would again like to thank both Godwin for his extraordinary insights as well as †Kay
Williamson who sent me studies on Gokana written by students from the University of Ibadan and the
University of Port Harcourt (see references).
3
/E/ stands for an archiphoneme which is realised [E] after /E, ç, a/, [e] after /i, u, e, o/, and [E)] when
nasalised. H(igh) tone is marked with an acute (´) accent, L(ow) with a grave (`) accent, and M(id) is

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question is how many syllables there are in the form in (5b)? How can one determine? Assign a
syllable to each vocalic mora, hence 6 syllables? Or to each pair of moras, hence 3 syllables?
One indirect argument against syllable structure in Gokana was that it was virtually impossible to
answer this question. However, Hyman did recognise the following problem:

“It is of course logically impossible to prove that a language does not have syllables, since
it may be the case that it has them but does not show obvious evidence of it—it may also be
the case that some future linguist might discover evidence for the syllable in Gokana which
I have simply overlooked.” (Hyman 1985:27)

Although one cannot definitively “prove” the ABSENCE of syllables, Hyman appealed to two
kinds of indirect arguments to support his original position: (i) a good-faith, but unsuccessful,
effort has been made to find the PRESENCE of syllables, based on the usual evidence and criteria;
(ii) the system can be insightfully analyzed without syllables.
In (6) I list the properties which have provided the usual evidence for syllables and syllable
structure in other languages.

(6) a. distributional constraints conditioned by syllable structure

b. phonological rules conditioned by syllable structure
c. morphological rules or allomorphy conditioned by syllable structure
d. prosodies or word-stress targeting the syllable as a feature-bearing unit
e. prosodic grouping of syllables into higher order constituents, e.g. feet

(6a-d) are taken up in the following four subsections; (6e) will be treated in §4.

3.1. Distributional constraints

The most revealing constituent affecting distributional constraints in Gokana is what I shall refer
to as the “prosodic stem” (PRSTEM), consisting of an obligatory root plus possible suffixes.

(7) a. shapes: CV, CVV, CVC, CVCV, CVVCV, CVCVV, CVVV, CVVCVV, CVVVV
b. C1 = p t ky k kp / + [m M n ¯ N]
b d gy g gb (= /B, v, D, z, g/ with
f s a [+nasal] prosody)
v z
l (= /D/)
c. C2 = /B, D, G/ (pronounced [m, n, N] when in a [+nasal] morpheme)

In (7a), I use the symbol V to indicate a mora. Unless subscripted as ViVi or ViVj, VV represents
either a long vowel or a sequence of (like or unlike) vowels. As seen, the PRSTEM may consist of
one to four moras. It must begin with a consonant (C1) and may have a second consonant (C2) or
not. Examples of each of the above structures are given in (8).

unmarked, or occasionally marked with a macron ( #). Thus, the 3sg. object pronoun /´EE/ has M tone
with a preceding floating H.

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(8) CV té ‘tree’ gç@0 ‘hide’

CVV bèè ‘plantain’ gbuu ‘swell’
CVC búl ‘mat’ mçn ‘see’
CVCV kávà ‘tick’ kpárí ‘sweep’
CVVCV bùùrù ‘ashes’ kaànà ‘pick (fruit)’
CVCVV tçnàà ‘branch’ kúmìè ‘pound [+logophoric]’
CVVV /oòà ‘return’ kE0E0E0 ‘wake up (tr.)’
CVVCVV gççmáá ‘cowry’ zaàrìè ‘scatter (+log.)’
CVVVV béèàE$ ‘pass +log’ kE0E0$a$0E$0 ‘wake up (intr. +log)’

Where possible, I have provided both a noun and a verb to exemplify. However, as the glosses
indicate, the shapes CVVV and CVVVV are restricted to verbs, which, unlike nouns, are capable
of taking suffixes (see §4). Note that nasalization or “nasal harmony” is a prosody in Gokana,
affecting vowels and converting /B, v, l, z, g/ to [m, M, n, ¯, N/.4 Thus, kaànà ‘pick (fruit)’ is
underlyingly /kaaDa/ [+nasal] ‘pick (fruit)’ and pronounced [ka0à0nà0]. Vowel nasalization will be
transcribed only when there is no nasal consonant in the form, e.g. kE0E0E0 ‘wake (someone) up’.
As indicated in (7b), the stem-initial C1 consonant can be any of 16 oral consonants plus
the nasal variants, while C2 is limited to the three archiphonemes /B, D, G/, which may be
realised as oral or nasal. When occurring orally, the archiphonemes are realised [b, l, g] finally
and [v, r, g] intervocalically, as exemplified in (9a).5

(9) “coda-like” “onset-like”

a. oral /B/ : zob ‘dance’ tóví ‘throw’ /tóB + i/
/D/ : kil ‘go’ darà ‘pick up’ /dà + Da/
/G/ : pig ‘mix’ viìgà ‘swing’ /vìiG + a/
b. nasal /B/ : num ‘groan’ kúmí ‘pound’ /kúB [+nas] + i/
/D/ : ban ‘beg’ bííná ‘ask’ /bíí [+nas] + Da/
/G/ : /aN ‘pull out’ maNà ‘laugh’ /BàG [+nas] + a/

The major issue, therefore, is how to account for the dramatic decrease in consonant contrasts in
C2 position. Although I have arranged the above forms in columns where the C2 is labeled as
“coda-like” vs. “onset-like”, it is clear that syllable structure cannot account for the limitation of
C2 to /B, D, G/. A move to arbitrarily assign the C2 to coda position in all cases, as in (10), not
only is counterintuitive, but forces an analysis with an otherwise unattested long-vowel CVVC
syllable in (10b).6

4
/B/ represents an archiphoneme which is realised [m] when nasalised, e.g. má ‘breast’ is underlyingly
/Bá/ [+nasal] and pronounced [má0].
5
Other dialects realise /B/ as [B] intervocalically (Arekamhe 1972:15; Asinyirimba 1972:18; Okotie
1971/72:29)
6
Two exceptional CVVC words with non-identical vowels, piob ‘tsetse fly’ and biçm ‘fingernail, claw’,
do occur in a lexicon of approx. 700 entries. Both Arekamhe (1972:23) and Okotie (1971/72:18) also
report tàám for ‘cat’, whereas I recorded nwám$báná, a likely frozen compound. Brosnahan (1964::47)
also reports biìn ‘bean’, an obvious borrowing.

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(10) a. tov.i ‘throw’ b. viig.a ‘swing’

dar.a ‘pick up’ bíín.a ‘ask’
kúm.í ‘pound’
maN.a ‘laugh’

It also can be seen in the last column of (9) that morphological structure cannot account for the
distributions: the C2 consonant may belong to the root or to a suffix.
A solution that does work is to say that a postvocalic consonant can only be /B, D, G/. This
is true whether the generalization is stated with respect to the PRSTEM or to the word, as there are
no vocalic prefixes.7 Alternatively, one could simply refer directly to the C2 position within the
PRSTEM. Either way, syllable structure is irrelevant.

3.2. Phonological rules

As discussed in Hyman (1985) and earlier work, the major phonological rules of Gokana are
nasal spreading, vowel harmony, and, most relevant to this study, the realization of /B/ and /D/
intervocalically.8 Since Gokana lacks underlying /y/ and /w/, the intervocalic context can be
captured via [-cons], i.e. without reference to syllabicity:9

(11) a. { B, D } → { v, r } / [-cons] ___ [-cons]

b. { B, D } → { b, l }

Had there been a contrast between /i, u/ and /y, w/, it might have been necessary to refer to
syllable structure in stating (11a). The absence of /y, w/ thus may not be an accident, but rather a
further indication that Gokana does not reference syllables in its phonology.

3.3. Allomorphy

A third area where syllables seem quite beside the point concerns the statement of allomorphy.
Gokana has two inflectional suffixes which vary allomorphically as in (12).

(12) 2nd pers. pl. subj. logophoric

a. after CViVi : -rii -rèè i.e. -DVV
b. after CVC : -ii -èè -VV
c. after (C)V : -i -è -V

7
The only potential nominal prefix (proclitic?) in the language is a homorganic nasal /N@-/ marking
diminutives, e.g. gà ‘skewer’, N@gà ‘needle’. All other pre-stem grammatical morphemes are either
proclitic or join with each other to form a separate phonological word.
8
Within the PRSTEM and also vocalic enclitics, vowel harmony affects mid vowels which are realised [E,
ç] after /E, ç, a/, [e, o] after /i, u, e, o/, and [E), ç)] when nasalised.
9
Although Vopnu (1991:29) reports variation between C1 [v] ~ [w] and [z] ~ [y] in other dialects, and
setting aside ambiguous /CyV, CyV, CiV/, the only [w] and [y] attested in the dialect under discussion
here concerns an optional “slight homorganic glide” (Hyman 1985:66) between a long /ii/ or /uu/ and the
following vowel, e.g. [siíe] ~ [siíye] ‘catch him!’, [/uúe] ~ [/uúwe] ‘cover him!’. I consider such “glides”
simply to be phonetic transitions between the vowels.

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Examples are provided in (13).

(13) a. oò sii-rii ‘you pl. caught’ aE$ siì-rèè ‘hei caught’

b. oò zov-ii ‘you pl. danced’ aE$ zov-èè ‘hei danced’
c. oò tu-i ‘you pl. took’ aE$ tu-è ‘hei took’

While a pure allomorphy solution is certainly tenable, Hyman (1985:66) interprets the
alternations as phonological, proposing a /D/ insertion rule as in (14a).

(14) a. Ø → D / µ µ ___ µ µ (D-insertion: Ø → D / V: __ V: )

[r]
[-cons] [-cons]
b. µ µ → µ / µ ___ (vowel shortening: V: → V / V __ )

[-cons] [-cons] [-cons]

As seen, D-insertion requires that both the preceding and following vowels be geminate: a single
set of [-cons] features linked to two moras. In (13c), D is not inserted since the preceding vowel
is short. Instead, the rule in (14b) applies to shorten a geminate vowel when it is directly
preceded by a vowel, whether long or short.10 In neither rule is there any reason to refer to
syllables. A second condition on D-insertion is that it is limited to the PRSTEM. Thus, when the
3rd person singular enclitic /´EE/ follows a long vowel, there is no epenthesis. Instead, vowel
shortening applies: /aÈ sii ´EE/ → aE$ siíe ‘he caught him’, /aÈ sii ´ii/ → aE$ siíi ‘he caught us’.
It should be noted that the rules in (14) do not seem to improve syllable structure: In other
languages such as Turkish, Japanese and Korean, where some suffixes are vowel-initial after a
C-final base, but consonant-initial after a V-final base, the effect is to optimise alternating CV
syllables. What the rules in (14) do seem to have in common is that they minimise certain
sequences of vocalic moras. However, as seen in examples such as in (15), they are hardly
effective:

(15) a. kuùà ‘to open (intr.)’ 2 pl. kuuai log. kuùàE$

b. ¯ááá ‘to change (intr.)’ ¯áaai ¯a@ºaº$aº$Eº$
c. kEºE$ºEº$ ‘to wake up (tr.)’ kE0E0E0iº kEºE$ºEº$Eº$

The forms in the first column involve CVV roots followed by a -V derivational suffix, either
anti-causative -a or causative -È. The second and third columns add the familiar 2pl. subject and
logophoric inflectional suffixes to these forms. The result is four successive vocalic moras
uninterrupted by a consonant. Note finally the forms in (16).

(16) a. bua ‘to cook (intr.)’ 2 pl. buai log. buàE$

b. mEà ‘to be born’ mEai mEàE$$
c. tóá ‘to carry on head’ tóai tóàE$
10
While (14a) inserts /D/ when the two long vowels succeed each other within the PRSTEM, (14b) instead
applies when the second long vowel is an enclitic, e.g. the 3sg pronoun /´EE/: /mii =´EE/ → miíE0 ‘his/her
blood’ (cf. mEnE@E ‘his/her neck’, búe ‘his/her pus) (Hyman 1985:39).

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The question is: If D-insertion were claimed to have the function of creating more C-initial
syllables, why doesn’t it apply after CV and CViVj bases? Why only after geminate vowels?
The forms in (16) indicate that Gokana fails to insert an onset to create a second, well-
formed syllable: *bua-rii, *buà-rE$E,$ etc. We now consider another morphological process which
in fact REMOVES what would be an onset C2 consonant. As seen in (17a), CV, CVV and CVC
add an -a suffix to form an “anti-causative” which is usually, but not always intransitive:

(17) a. CV : gç@0 ‘hide (tr.)’ gç@0a0@ ‘hide (intr.)’

CVV : bii ‘press (tr.)’ biìà ‘press (intr.), be too tight’
CVC : /ig ‘twist (tr.)’ /igà ‘twist (intr.)’
b. CVCi : /óví ‘roast, burn (tr.)’ /óvá ‘burn (intr.)’
CVVCi : zaari ‘scatter (tr.)’ zaàrà ‘scatter (intr.)’
c. CVCa : darà ‘pick up’ daàà ‘begin, pick up (intr.)’
CVVCa : kuùrà ‘open (tr.)’ kuùà ‘open (intr.)’
CVCE : bErE ‘lean (tr.)’ bEE$à ‘lean (intr.)’

Verbs which end in -i replace this suffix with -a, as in (17b). The most surprising result is seen in
(17c): When a CV(V)CV verb ends in -a or –E, the C2 consonant is deleted, the preceding vowel
is lengthened (if it is not already long), and the final vowel is again -a. In producing CVVV
sequences in both (16) and (17c), the associated operations indicate an apparent disinterest in
syllable onsets, at least with respect to C2.
Still in the context of morphology, note finally in (18) that reduplication does not identify
the syllable as the template for the preposed reduplicant:

(18) a. dç ‘fall’ dç-dç$ ‘falling’

b. dib ‘hit’ di-dìb ‘hitting’
c. darà ‘pick up’ da-dàrà ‘picking up’
d. piìgà ‘try’ pi-pììgà ‘trying’

Instead, the reduplicant copies the first CV mora of the base.

3.4. Prosodies and word-stress

In some languages prosodies have been reported whereby a syllable may bear a prosodic feature
as a unit, e.g. the “emphatic” feature of Aramaic (Hoberman 1988). The two prosodies in
Gokana, nasal harmony and vowel harmony, are not so restricted. First, while some syllables are
completely nasal and others oral, it is possible for a CV sequence to have an oral consonant and a
nasalised vowel, e.g. bá0 ‘pot’, gbíº ‘look for’, kE0 ‘place’. In addition, both harmonies clearly
extend beyond a single syllable and, in fact, outside the PRSTEM onto vocalic enclitics. There
thus is no need to see either as syllable-based.
This leaves the question of word-stress. It is clear that Gokana does not have “stress” in the
sense of English and other such languages. This should not be surprising, as the typical features
of stress (f0, duration, intensity) are not likely to be available in Gokana: First, since the language
has an underlying three-height tone system of /H/, /M/ and /L/, and a fourth derived downstepped

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↓
M tone, there is little room for f0 to play a role. Second, recalling (5), we have seen sequences of
up to six moras of identical vowel length, making duration particularly unavailable for marking
stress. This leaves intensity. While no differences have been observed in the realization of
identical C1 and C2 consonants, e.g. in stems such as miimii ‘red’ and náná ‘to pick up’, dramatic
inventory differences in the contrasts that are allowed on C1 vs. C2 were pointed out in (7). Is the
more extensive set of C1 contrasts evidence of initial stress?
This question will come up again in §4. For our present purpose the issue is rather whether
a putative initial stress provides evidence for the syllable. One of the assumptions concerning
word stress is that it is necessarily a property of syllables, or at least the rime, which is either
stressed or unstressed. Any system that requires a heavy syllable, e.g. CVV, to contrast
intrasyllabic prominence, e.g. on its first vs. second mora, at the very least involves something
more than stress (typically, tone). In order to determine whether there is initial syllable stress in
Gokana, we have to establish what the possible structures are of the putative initial syllable.
Where the PRSTEM has the shape CV, CVC or CViVi, there seems to be no question. What about
CViVj stems such as those seen earlier in(16)? How many syllables are there in forms such as
buai ‘to cook (intr.) + 2pers pl.), kuùàE$ ‘to open (intr.) +log.’, and ultimately kEºEº$Eº$Eº$EºE@º in (5)?
Suffice it here to say that even if we accept initial prominence, we have not been able to uniquely
parse the PRSTEM into syllables. This issue is further explored in the next section.

4. The prosodic stem revisited

In the preceding section we ended by raising the issue of whether the distributional properties of
consonants suggest an initial stress. The question is how to account for the asymmetries between
C1 and C2, which are reminiscent of onset-coda assymmetries. First, C1 has a much fuller
inventory than C2 (cf. (7b) vs. (7c)). Second, C1 is obligatory vs. C2, which is not. It is not just
consonants which show such an asymmetry, but also vowels. Restricting ourselves to lexical
entries having the shapes C1V1(:)C2V2(:), the tables in (19) show that the vowels which follow C2
are significantly restricted:

(19) a. nouns (74 out of a total of 311 noun entries)

V2:
i e E u o ç a
i 3 0 0 0 0 0 6
e 0 11 0 0 0 0 1
V1: E 0 0 8 0 0 0 0
u 1 1 0 4 0 0 0
o 0 0 0 0 7 0 1
ç 1 1 0 0 0 8 4
a 5 0 0 0 0 0 12

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b. verbs (159 out of a total of 316 verb entries)

V2:
i e E u o ç a
i 8 6 (4) 0 0 0 15
e 3 2 0 0 0 0 9
V1: E 4 0 9 0 0 0 6
u 7 3 (1) 1 0 0 8
o 5 2 0 0 0 0 8
ç 8 1 6 0 0 0 8
a 9 0 5 0 0 0 19

In (19a) I only counted nouns which meet the shape requirements in (7), i.e. ignoring compounds
and obvious borrowings (which would not have changed the results significantly). As seen,
64/74 or 86.5% of these nouns have an identical V1 and V2 or an /i-a/ or /a-i/ sequence. Those
cells which are shaded show either no entry or one exceptional case. The story is different in
verbs where, as seen in (19b), the V2 has one of the suffix shapes /i/, /a/ or /E/, the last
harmonizing as [e] after /i, u, e, o/ and [E] after /E, ç, a/. (The V2 vowels in parentheses are the
result of nasalization, which permits [E)], but not *[e)].) As seen, only one verb, bunu ‘break’, has
a rounded V2.
Clearly all seven vowels contrast as V1, but not as V2, just as all consonants occur as C1 but
not as C2. In recognition of the fuller distribution of C1 and V1, Hyman (1990) proposed a
compromise: Perhaps Gokana syllabifies the first CV of the word, while any remaining segments
remain unsyllabified. If syllabified, all segments contrast; if not syllabified, there are significant
restrictions. However, the above asymmetries are clearly reflexes of stem-initial prominence,
which licenses a fuller set of contrasts (Beckman 1998; Hyman 1998, 2008; Smith 2002). In this
connection, note that there is pervasive evidence that the “prosodic stem” is definable in terms of
foot structure in related languages, e.g. in Ibibio, another Cross-River language (Akinlabi &
Urua 2003, Harris 2004). As Akinlabi & Urua demonstrate, Ibibio verbs show evidence of a
heavy-light trochee in the negative:

(20) Affirmative Negative Affirmative Negative

a. dí dííƒé ‘come’ kÉpù kÉpùùƒó ‘be in vain’
sé sééƒé ‘look’ dó dóóƒó ‘be’
dá dááƒá ‘stand’ nç$ nç$ç$ƒç@ ‘give’
b. /díp/ [dÆ@p] dÆ@ppé ‘hide’ /dùt/ [d√$t] d√$ttç@ ‘drag’
dép déppé ‘buy’ nám námmá ‘do, perform’
bót bóttó ‘mould’ bén bénné ‘carry [w/hand]’
kç$k kç$kkç@ ‘vomit’ sàN sàNNá ‘go’
c. déép dééBé ‘scratch’ wèèm wèemé ‘flow’
síít sííRé ‘seal an opening’ ¯ç$ç$n ¯ç$ç$nç@ ‘crawl’
wúúk wúúƒó ‘drive sth. in’ kç@ç@N kç@ç@Nç@ ‘hang on hook’
d. tòBó tòBóké ‘make an order’ yòmó yòmóké ‘talk noisily’
kéRé kéRéké ‘think’ sÆ@né sÆ@néké ‘put on dress’
fèƒé fèƒéké ‘run’ sàNá sàNáké ‘walk’

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e. dààRá dààRáké ‘rinse’ yç@ç@Nç@ yç@ç@Nç@ké ‘plaster [a wall]’

tòòRó tòòRóké ‘praise’
f. dáppá dáppáké ‘dream’ dámmá dámmáké ‘be mad’
sÆ@tté sÆ@ttéké ‘remove stopper’ ¯ànná ¯ànnáké ‘stretch’
s√$kkç@ s√$kkç@ké ‘faint’ wç@NNç@ wç@NNç@ké ‘turn’

In (20a), when the negative suffix /-ké/ is suffixed to a CV verb base, three things happen: (i) the
root vowel lengthens; (ii) the /k/ voices and spirantises to [ƒ]; (iii) the vowel of /-ké/ assimilates
in rounding and lowness to the preceding vowel. The same vowel assimilations are observed in
(20b), where the /k/ assimilates to the preceding consonant and (20c), where the /k/ is deleted.
As a result, the root+negative forms have the shape CVV.CV or CVC.CV in (20a-c), i.e. a
heavy-light trochee. The remaining forms in (20d-f) show that when the verb base already has
two syllables, whether CV.CV, CVV.CV or CVC.CV, the negative suffix fails to undergo any of
the modifications seen in (20a-c) and is instead realised as [-ké]. The explanation is that /-ké/ is
modified only when it constitutes the second syllable of the trochaic foot, which determines the
realization of C2 and V2 segments. Can such a foot analysis work for Gokana?
To help address this question, consider the internal structure of the Gokana verb stem in
(21).

(21) ROOT + (derivational suffix) + (inflectional suffix)

-È, -DE ‘causative’ -ii ‘2pl. subject’
-a ‘anti-causative’ -ÈÈ ‘logophoric’
-mà ‘instrumental’
-Da, -i (frozen, lexical)

As seen, there are three “slots”: an obligatory root, a possible derivational suffix, and a possible
inflectional suffix. Since each of these slots can be filled by only one morpheme, the PRSTEM has
a maximum of one derivational and one inflectional suffix. Thus, when one of the productive
suffixes, -mà or -a, is added to a verb which has an unproductive suffix, the latter deletes:

(22) lexical -Da: bErà ‘lean on sth.’ kErà ‘hang on neck’

causative -DE: bErE ‘lean (tr.)’ kErE ‘hang (tr.)’
anti-causative -a: bEE$à ‘lean (intr.)’ kE$E$à ‘hang (intr.), droop’
instrumental -ma: bEE$mà ‘lean with’ kEE$mà ‘hang with’

Just as one cannot stack derivational suffixes, inflectional logophoricity cannot be marked when
the subject is 2nd person plural.
Having established the above morphological definition, recall from (7a) that the PRSTEM is
restricted to the following shapes: CV, CVV, CVC, CVCV, CVVCV, CVCVV, CVVV,
CVVCVV, and CVVVV. As indicated, the PRSTEM must begin with a consonant.11 In addition,
it has a maximum of two Cs and four Vs. We saw in (7c) that C2 is restricted to /B, D, G/. The

11
There is no advantage to analyzing roots such as /ú ‘to die’ and /E@b ‘to look at’ as /ú/ and /E@B/ with the
glottal stop being epenthetic, since this glottal stop is always present. I thus included /// as one of the C1
consonants in (7b).

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PRSTEM also is the domain of D-insertion (14a). Recall the verb form with six lengths of [E)]
from (5a), repeated in (23a).

(23) a. mEº@E@º Eº$ kç# m#m$ kE#ºEº$Eº$Eº$E#ºE@º ‘whoi said I woke himi up?’
b. [ kE#ºE$º + E$º + E$º ] = E#º = E@º < / kEE + È + ÈÈ + ´EE + É /
wake -CAUS -LOG] 3sg. FOC [+nasal]

As indicated in (23b), the PRSTEM consists of the root plus two suffixes (causative /È/,
logophoric /ÈÈ/). It is in turn followed by two enclitics: /´EE/ ‘3sg. object’, /É/ ‘focus marker’.
Given the underlying input to the right in (23b), D-insertion could have applied between the
logophoric suffix and the 3sg., both of which consist of a long vowel, but does not, because the
enclitic falls outside the PRSTEM. Instead, both the logophoric suffix and the 3sg enclitic undergo
vowel shortening (14b), which applies both within and outside the PRSTEM.
Another effect of the PRSTEM is tonal. The PRSTEM is restricted to at most a bitonal
melody, e.g. HM, ML, MH, calculated on the basis of the root tone + morphological tone. If the
M toned 3sg. enclitic belonged to the PRSTEM , this would produce a tri-tonal melody MLM.
This not only would exceed the bitonal melody restriction, but also contain a prohibited output
*L-M which, if present in the input, surfaces as M-M, e.g. /kE$-DE#/ → [kE#rE#] ‘to hang (tr.)’
(Hyman 1985:108).12
Given the structure of the verb stem in (21) and the restrictions of at most one derivational
and one inflectional suffix, the PRSTEM will never be longer than CVV(C)VV. Nouns which
exceed this length look suspiciously as compounds, reduplications, or borrowings:

(24) /àáNkE@rE@ ‘groundnut’ kpç@gç@rç@ ‘iron’

begèsí0 ‘length’ lç$rígyà ‘orange’
kúrútE@0 ‘hip, waist’ dúdúntç ‘knee’
kúkúúkE0$ ‘dove’ kúkç$ç$rç$ ‘ceiling’

Of the 22 such nouns in my lexicon, several suggest frozen noun class prefixes, e.g. págbárà
‘man’ (cf. gbárà ‘man’, pábia ‘woman’), vikoko ‘chimpanzee’ (cf. vígà (~ N@-gà) ‘needle’, where
ví- likely was a diminutive prefix cognate with Proto-Bantu classl 19 *pi-).
The crucial question is how to capture the fact that the PRSTEM has the maximum length
CVV(C)VV? Among the possibilities are that the PRSTEM consists of a maximum of (i) four Vs;
(ii) four moras; (iii) two moraic trochees; (iv) two heavy syllables. While all four correctly
predict that there cannot be a fifth V (or mora), only the last accounts for two additional sets of
prohibitions in (25).

(25) a. *CVCVCV, *CVCVCVCV

b. *CVCVVV, *CVVVCV

As we have said, the PRSTEM can have at most two Cs, hence structures such as in (25a) are
impossible. Somewhat more surprising is the unacceptability of the structures in (25b), where the
C2 occurs between one and three Vs. Recall that both CVVCVV and CVVVV are well-formed.
12
In fact, L-M is often converted to M-M in the postlexical phonology as well (Hyman 1985:114-115).
Still, an alternate pronunciation kEºEº$Eº#Eº#E#ºE@º has also been recorded.

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All of this can be readily captured if we assume that the PRSTEM is subject to a maximum size
constraint of two heavy syllables, i.e. a [σs-σw] trochee, where each syllable can have one or two
Vs (or moras). Under this assumption the nine CV PRSTEM shapes in (7a) have the following
syllable structures:

(26) σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ

CV CVV CVC CV.CV CVV.CV CV.CVV CVV.V CVV.CVV CVV.VV

An unexpected biproduct of this analysis can be seen in its interaction with the conspiracy
motivating the two processes in (14): Both D-insertion and vowel shortening respond to the
constraint in (27a) which prohibits a long vowel following another vowel (whether long or
short):

(27) a. *µ µ µ b. σ σ
V V µ µ µ
V V

As seen in (27b), if the first vowel were short, the result could be a long vowel split between two
syllables. Since such a structure is often prohibited in languages, the fact that vowel shortening
applies to delink the long vowel, as indicated, is not an unwelcome result.13
This completes the case for the syllable in Gokana: The PRSTEM consists exactly of one
foot which in turn can be mono- or bisyllabic, with either syllable being heavy or light. Note that
while this analysis correctly accounts for the ill-formedness of (25a,b), it does not do everything:
We still need to explain the restricted distribution of stem-final C2 and the non-occurrence of
consonant clusters within the PRSTEM :

(26) a. CVC vs. (*CVVC), *CVCVC, *CVVVC etc.

b. *CVCCV, *CVCCVV etc.

While several of the starred sequences in (26) can be ruled out by the maximum of two Cs, the
bisyllabic trochee does not directly account for this limitation. Nor does it explain why *CVVVC
is unacceptable, since it could be syllabified as CVV.VC on analogy with CVV.V and CVV.VV.
One idea might be to assume that a stem-final C is necessarily a syllable, which might include an
empty nucleus (Kaye 1990) and function as word-final onsets as proposed by Piggott (1999),
Harris & Gussman (2002) and others. One might go further to assume that consonant clusters
also have an intervening nucleus (see Scheer 2004 and references cited therein). Under this
interpretation both *CVCVC and *CVCCV would necessarily consist of three syllables, hence
exceeding the bisyllabic maximum of the PRSTEM. This approach would be particularly
compelling if *CCV and *CCVV were well-formed prosodic stems, with initial CC clusters
disallowed in longer forms. An empty nucleus or “ghost V” approach will certainly be a bit

13
One would still have to explain why a form such as /tú-´ÈÈ/ ‘take [+logophoric]’, realised [túè], is not
instead syllabified *tú.èè vs. CV.CVV, which is an acceptable PRSTEM structure, e.g. /zoB + ´ÈÈ/ →
[zo.vèè] ‘dance [+logophoric]’.

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abstract for many phonologists who, like myself, would be willing simply to impose further
constraints on final consonants and consonant clusters.14
Still, it must be pointed out that there is some evidence that CVC verbs are not consonant
final. In Gokana, verb roots show a binary tonal contrast, which I refer to here as H vs. non-H
(cf. however Hyman 1985:108ff). It turns out that CVC verbs all have non-H tone, while CVC-i
verbs almost all have H tone:15

(27) CVC (= 45 verbs) CVC-i (= 36 verbs)

lab ‘disperse (tr.)’ láví ‘pick’
/ul ‘blow’ /úrí ‘boil (intr.)’
pig ‘mix’ pç@gí ‘scratch’
num ‘groan (in pain)’ nyímí ‘be sour’
kin ‘reject, refuse’ kE@ní ‘tremble’
/aN ‘pull out’ sE@Ní ‘use up sth. Gradually’’

The tonal complementarity seen in (27) suggests that the CVC verbs are probably best analyzed
as CVC-i, with a tonally-sensitive rule deleting the -i suffix. It turns out that this -i appears in the
aorist (“zero”) tense, which adds a L tone suffix when the subject is first or second person
(Hyman 1985:109). Thus compare the various realizations of the future and aorist forms in (28).

(28) future aorist

CV: òó sa ò saà ‘you sg. (will) choose’
òó tú ò túù ‘you sg. (will) take’
CVC: òó dib ò divì ‘you sg. (will) hit’
CVC-i: òó kórí ò kórì ‘you sg. (will) call’
CVV: òó bii ò biì ‘you sg. (will) squeeze’
òó síi ò síì ‘you sg. (will) catch’

While CV verbs add a mora with L tone in the aorist to which the root vowel can spread, CVC
verbs appear to add -ì. In reality this is the underlying /-i/ suffix that accompanies CVC verbs,
e.g. /diB-i/ ‘hit’, but which otherwise drops out in the non-H tone class. The last examples in
(28) show that a H CVC-i verb and both tone classes of CVV verbs do not insert an additional
mora to take the L tone. A reasonable interpretation, then, is that these aorist forms assign a L
suffix which cannot link to the V1. As a result, an additional mora will be required whenever the
verb base is CV.
While there is reason to posit a “floating” -i suffix after CVC verbs, there is no
corresponding evidence in the case of nouns, which contrast all three tones:

(29) H (31) M (16) L (7)

dE@m ‘tongue’ dEm ‘rock’ dùm ‘life’
dç@m ‘husband’ kib ‘louse’ kùn ‘basket’
/ól ‘farm’ kçm ‘wound’ kç$l ‘forest’

14
It also would not explain why CVVC is generally prohibited (but cf. note 6).
15
Three CVC-i verbs have been found with M-M tone: bugi ‘count, read’, bagi ‘tear’ (= baa), /ivi
‘fetch?’.

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In this context consider the genitive construction in Gokana. As seen in (30a,b), when a noun has
H or L tone, the genitive consists of a simple juxtaposition of possessed + possessor:

(30) a. CV H té ‘tree’ té nEn ‘tree of person’

b. L gE$ ‘knife’ gE$ nEn ‘knife of person’
c. M tç ‘house’ tçç$ nEn ‘house of person’
d. CVC mEn ‘neck’ mEn$ nEn ‘neck of person’
e. CVV mii ‘blood’ miì nEn ‘blood of person’
f. CVCV kigi ‘axe’ kigì nEn ‘axe of person’

In (30b-f), however, we observe that there is a L tonal morpheme that marks the genitive after M
tone nouns. The example in (30c) shows that this L requires an inserted mora when the noun is
CV (Hyman 1985:24). Crucially no mora is inserted when the M noun is CVC, as in (30d) or
CVV (30e), nor when the noun is bisyllabic M-M (30f). It seems, therefore, that nouns such as in
(29) are really /CVC/ and that we must simply accept that final consonants are allowed in
Gokana—but only when a word is monosyllabic.16 In the next section we consider some of the
implications of these findings.

5. Discussion

In §4 we presented the following potential evidence in support of the syllable in Gokana:

(31) a. the maximum prosodic stem structure CVV(C)VV can be characterised either as two
syllables or four moras
b. if we assume two syllables, each with a maximum of two moras (Vs), the absence of
*CVCVVV and *CVVVCV structures is accounted for
c. if we assume two syllables, we can account for why the prosodic stem allows only two
CVs, i.e. *CVCVCV, *CVCVCVCV
d. the trochaic [σs-σw] structure is consistent with the C1/C2 and V1/V2 asymmetries
e. the vowel shortening rule in (14b) which “conspires” with D-insertion in (14a) to
avoid a sequence of vowel + long vowel prevents a long vowel being split between
two syllables
f. if a final C must count as a syllable, we have an explanation as to why the prosodic
stem can be CVC, but not *CVCVC; (*CVVC is left unexplained)

Among the above arguments (31a-c) are stronger than (31d-f), as the latter either have other
possible explanations, e.g. positional prominence, or are highly theory-dependent, e.g. requiring
a final C to be a syllable. It should be noted here that (31a) was insufficient in the absence of
(31b,c), since it would be possible to characterise the CVV(C)VV structure either as a bisyllabic
trochaic foot or as a “colon” consisting of two moraic trochees (cf. Michael 2010 for such a need
in Iquito, an Zaparoan language of Peru). There is a hidden assumption that prosodic maxima

16
Recall, however, the exceptional CVVC nouns mentioned in note 6, specifically M tone piob ‘tsetse fly’
and biçm ‘fingernail. The fact that they appear as piobô nEn and biçm$ nEn in the genitive rather than *piòb
nEn and *biç$m n En, may argue that they are better analyzed as /pyoB/ and /byçB/ [+nasal].

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should be characterizable as prosodic constituents, just like prosodic minima. In this connection
note the variations in maximal stem size reported for NW Bantu languages spoken to the East of
the Cross-River area (Hyman 2006):

(32) a. four - syllable maximum: Yaka (Hyman 1998), Bobangi (Whitehead 1899)
Punu (Fontaney 1980, Blanchon 1995)
b. three (~four) - syllable maximum: Koyo (Hyman 2008)
c. three-syllable maximum: Tiene (Ellington 1977), Basaá (Lemb & Degastines 1973,
Hyman 2003), Kukuya (Paulian 1975)

In Bobangi out of 3,324 verbs found in Whitehead’s (1899) dictionary, only three have stems of
five syllables, while in Koyo, only the durative -Vg- suffix is capable of producing a fourth
syllable in the stem. Although there is no additional evidence, perhaps these four syllables
constitute a colon of two bisyllabic (trochaic?) feet. What then to think about the three-syllable
maximum languages, where both Basaá and Kukuya show the middle syllable to be “weak”? Are
these trisyllabic (s-w-w) feet, or are they bipedal (s-w)(s)? Paulian’s (1975) analysis suggests the
latter, as she claims that the first CV has a primary accent and the third CV a secondary accent.
Assuming that the Gokana PRSTEM does consist of a maximal bisyllabic trochee, this still
leaves open the question of how to syllabify moras which lie outside the stem. How should the
extra two moras of (23b) be interpreted—as one bimoraic or two monomoraic syllables? Up until
now we have tacitly proceeded by assigning stem moras to syllables in a left-to-right, two-by-
two fashion. This would mean that forms like those in (16) would be syllabified as in (33a,b).

(33) a. σ b. σ σ c. σ σ
µ µ µ µ µ µ µ µ
bu a b u à E$ bu à E$
‘cook (intr.)’ [+logophoric]

In (33a) /bua/ has been assigned to one syllable, although it could conceivably have been
interpreted as two. In (33b), the first two moras have been assigned to the first syllable, and the
third mora to the second syllable, basically for the reason of wanting to fill up the head syllable
of the trochee before moving to the second syllable. The reverse in (33c), however, would not
pose any problems and would be needed, in any case in forms like da.ràE$ ‘pick up [+logophoric]’.
Perhaps more serious indeterminacy arises in the case of enclitics. Consider the sentence in (34a)
which should be compared with (23a):

(34) a. mEº@E@º Eº$ kç# m#m$ kE#ºEº#Eº@E#ºE@º ‘whoi said I woke himj up?’
b. [ kE#ºE#º + E@º ] = E#º = E@º < / kEE + È + ´EE + É /
wake -CAUS 3sg. FOC [+nasal]

As seen, (34a) differs from (23a) in not having the logophoric suffix /´ÈÈ/. As a result ‘who’ and
‘him’ are not coreferential. If we follow the left-to-right syllabification procedure we have
applied thus far, the PRSTEM will syllabify as kE0#E0#.E0@. But how do we syllabify the remaining two
moras? If the 3sg. enclitic joins the causative suffix of the PRSTEM, this would produce kE0#E0#.E0@E0#.E0@.

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If syllabification is not permitted to apply across the PRSTEM-enclitic boundary, this will instead
produce kE0#E0#[email protected]#0E0@.
Whichever solution one adopts—and there seems to be no consequence of choosing one vs.
the other—we still have the question of what to do with leftover moras: Do they form their own
foot or do they remain unfooted? The problems of how to syllabify and how/whether to foot
extra-PRSTEM moras also arise with proclitics, e.g. the eaE$ sequence in (35a).

(35) a. nEn@ /eaE$ mç$n a ‘the person that he saw’

b. nEn@ /eoò mç$n a ‘the person that you sg. saw’

This sequence is obtained by sequencing the relativiser /´e/, the 3sg. subject pronoun /a/ and the
past tense morpheme /È/. (The final /a/ is a determiner which occurs at the end of relative
clauses.) As seen from the initial glottal stop, the sequence is phrased off from what precedes it.
The two questions concern how this sequence should be syllabified and whether it should be
considered a foot. Following what has been said thus far, the most likely syllabification would be
/ea.E$ rather than /e.aE$ or /e.a.E$. The first syllabification would also be consistent with
recognizing /ea.E$ as a [σs-σw] trochaic foot. Consider, however, the corresponding sentence in
(35b) which differs only in having a 2sg. subject. Following the same assumptions, when /ó+È/
fuses as oò not only would this produce the unusual syllabification /eo.ò, with the long vowel
split between two syllables, but we would also have to explain why the resulting long vowel does
not undergo shortening by (14b). While a number of solutions come to mind (rule ordering,
blocking of (14b) when the result would be the loss of a full morpheme etc.), we have to at least
recognise that questions of syllabification and footing are quite irrelevant once one leaves the
PRSTEM domain.17 In other words, other than the PRSTEM-specific arguments in (31a-c), there is
little reason to assume syllables in Gokana. We take up this last point in §6.

§6. Conclusion

To sum up the previous discussion, we have seen some advantage to recognizing syllables in
Gokana and in characterizing the PRSTEM maximum as a weight-insensitive trochee. Without the
syllable one would have to stipulate this maximum as four moras with additional statements to
rule out CVCVVV and CVVVCV as well as any structure that would have three CVs. Another
language which was once thought not to organise its phonology in terms of syllables is Japanese,
which Trubetzkoy (1969[1939]:180) characterised as a “mora-counting language”. Although
Japanese makes extensive use of the mora, often without regard to syllabification, Kubozono
(1999, 2003) has provided both metrical and accentual evidence for the syllable. Going in the
opposite direction, Steriade (1999) and Blevins (2003) argue for alternatives to the syllable in
accounting for phonotactics. In many cases, phonotactic restrictions are most insightfully
captured by reference to the foot (cf. Harris 2004), as we have also seen concerning the C2 in
Gokana. While much of the strongest remaining evidence for the syllable is thus metrical, e.g.
concerning stress, which necessarily relies on syllables, or prosodic morphology, Steriade (2009)
has questioned the reliability of syllables in accounting for certain rhythmic properties and
rhyming.

17
Additional indeterminacies could be cited from other parts of the grammar but will be skipped to keep
the discussion brief.

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Although what we are left with at this point is anything but clear, it is in this context that
we have had to address the questions of whether Gokana has syllables and whether the syllable is
universal. As pointed out in §2, claimed syllable universals are often highly theory-dependent. I
therefore seek to “normalise” the discussion and shift to the more basic question in my subtitle:
What’s so great about being universal? Why does it matter? Whether evidence for the syllable
can be found in all languages or in all languages except Gokana seems hardly to make a
difference. If no language can exist without syllables, some may wish to make claims about
inateness. However, if Gokana were the only language without syllables, wouldn’t the near-
universality of the syllable raise the same research questions? It would seem that either position
on its universality is compatible with attempts to ground the syllable in processing and/or
production, and account for the overwhelming tendency to phonologise the CV vs. VC
asymmetry into the familiar constituents known as syllables.
In my abstract I included a quote from Hayward (1997) which expressed surprise at the
lack of response to the earlier claim that Gokana lacked syllables. Ironically, if Gokana has
syllables, then perhaps the field was correct to ignore Hyman (1983, 1985), feeling that further
investigations would ultimately reveal them. Independent of the confidence we may or may not
have in the evidence presented for syllables in Gokana in this paper, I would like to follow
Hayward and argue for a less “black and white” stance: Some languages care a lot about
syllables, while others care much less. Gokana cares so little about the syllable that all we have is
the ambigous interpretation of the CVV(C)VV PRSTEM maximum. In fact, a moment’s reflection
will reveal that lots of things in phonology are like this: Some languages care a lot about stress,
like English, while others care less, e.g. Hungarian, where “Stress does not play a significant role
in the word level phonology…” (Kenesei, Vago & Fenyves 1998:428) or Turkish, where stress
can be identified mostly on the basis of f0 (Levi 2005), but not a single phonological constraint or
rule refers to stress. In fact, some languages care so little about stress that they have been
claimed not to have stress at all, e.g. Bella Coola:

[There is] no phonemically significant phenomena of stress or pitch associated with

syllables or words.... When two or more syllabics occur in a word or sentence, one can
clearly hear different degrees of articulatory force. But these relative stresses in a sequence
of acoustic syllables do not remain constant in repetitions of the utterance. (Newman
1947:132)

The same distinctions are observed in how phonetic features are phonologised: Some languages
care a lot about nasality, others less, and still others lack nasality altogether, e.g. several Lakes
Plain languages of New Guinea. It is well known that languages phonologise f0 differently, e.g.
as lexical tone, pitch-accents, boundary tones. However, even among lexical tone languages,
some exploit tone much more and in more varied ways than others, and so forth. Phonological
typologists should be concerned with characterizing and explaining these interesting variations in
how phonetic substance is phonologised in different languages—but we needn’t claim that every
available phonetic feature or structure will be exploited to the same extent in every language.
In a recent lead article, Evans & Levinson (2009) argue that the attention of linguists and
cognitive scientists should be more directed towards explaining the enormous diversity found
among the world’s languages which, they suggest, violate a number of claimed grammatical
universals. Here too I would suggest the same “property-driven” approach as I have advocated
for syllables: Most languages care a lot about recursion, constituent structure, and the difference

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between nouns and verbs, while others care less, so much less that one sometimes has to dig to
find evidence that they care at all. Instead of legislating syllables as a universal, the universal
question should be: What properties do different languages really care about? How much does
Gokana care about syllables?

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