|
CV
|
-ba
|
‘flower’
|
|
CVV
|
-dea
|
‘back’
|
C.gif)
|
-hon
|
‘child’
|
|
|
| A vowel constitutes
the peak of a syllable and forms vocalic cluster within the same syllable
in diphthong. No consonant cluster within a syllable. |
Here, ‘V’
denotes any vowel  , a non-syllabic vowel and ‘C’ any consonant, since
any vowel precedes or follows any consonant with the restrictions
that/ /does
not begin a syllable and /h/ does not end it, and also that /s/ cannot
be a word-final. Again, since a long vawal is interpreted as a double
vowel it is to be represented as /VV/, however, when we have /VV/
of identical vowels, there is no change in peak sonority, i.e., they
do not form two syllables. |
| Now, taking the syllable
as the basic constituent of an utterance, of whatever semantic construction,
we can conclude that the whole utterance is a sequence of syllables
and since a syllable is any one of the seven kinds of phonologic structure,
the whole utterance is a combination of those syllable types, as in
the case of a word. |
| Any corpus of Munda
speech from a syllable to a long utterance can be represented by a
structural formula: |
| ,
where the segments within the parenthesis may or may not occur, while
the ‘C’ in bracket is still optional (so that the whole
stretch VVCC does not takeplace) and * indicates that each occurs
exclusive to the other. Here the symbol ‘C’
serves two important purposes - (i) it is a limiting point for the
syllable beginning with a V, while it itself may or may not be included
in it, and (ii) it is an originating point for the syllable beginning
with C, for which the precedingpart
is zero. The restriction with //,/s/ and /h/ holds good in a full utterance as well. By this
frame any conbination of syllables ranging from a single V to CVC
listed above can be explained. Therefore, a whole utterance will be
a repetition of such sequences in any combination. |
| 1.13.
Stress and prominence: |
| 1.13.1. Stress in
Mundari is not significant. It is predictable and therefore non-phonemic.
On word level it may be heard in following situation: |
| (i) If a vowel
precedes a glottal stop or a pre-glottalized sound, the vowel is tense,
short and stressed heavily. |
| (ii) Any vocalic
suffix which occurs in word-final and is isolated by an intervening
juncture, becomes stressed. |
| (iii) The
initial vowel in a word which constitutes a syllable by itself in
a di-syllabic word is optiionally stressed. |
| (iv) A syllable
is stressed expressely to indicate emphasis for intensity (as will
be discussed in § 1.14 shortly). |
| The examples for
the four occurrences may be illustrated by the following words in
isolation [ą?d] ‘to lose’, [tana -č]
‘does he’, [ąpe]
‘you (plural)’, [bugģn]
‘very very good’ and so on. |
| With reference to
a sentence, the distribution of stress is difficult to be distinguished
fromn the rise of pitch. While in a word it does not essentially go
with the high pitch as in [laaģ?]
‘stomach’, in a sentence it always coincides with the high
pitch and becomes indistinct. |
| Stress in Mundari
does not, generally, occur with length, rather the vowel becomes short
and tense when stressed. |
| 1.13.2. The prominence
is a feature which makes a syllable relatively loud with respect to
the neighbouring syllables (except |
