1999/01/01 by Gavan Breen, Rob Pensalfini · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · Mathematics · #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Australian Indigenous Culture and History #Language and cultural evolution #Syllabification #Syllable #Linguistics #Word (group theory) #Linguistic universal #Preference #Psychology #Computer science #Theoretical linguistics #Mathematics #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1162/002438999553940
openalex publication_date 1999/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
That syllable onsets are present in all languages is widely regarded as axiomatic, and the preference for syllabifying consonants as onsets over codas is considered a linguistic universal. The Central Australian language Arrernte provides the strongest possible counterevidence to this universal, with phenomena generally used to determine syllabification suggesting that all consonants in Arrernte are syllabified as codas at the word level. Attempts to explain the Arrernte facts in terms of syllables with onsets either make the wrong predictions or require proposals that render the putative onset universal unfalsifiable.