A word may consist of one or more syllables. A
syllable is characterized as a sequence of phonemes with one peak of sonority.
In each syllable, the vowel has the peak of sonority. A vowel may be preceded or
followed by one or more consonants. A single consonant between two vowels is
called onset when it goes with the second vowel. When there are two consonants
between two vowels, the consonant whiich goes with the first vowel is coda. The
syllable is open when the vowel is the final segment and it is closed/checked
when the final segment is consonant/semivowel.
The following is the syllabic pattern in Puri. There are words consisting of
one to six syllables. However words with two and three syllables are more
common.
Monosyllabic words may be either open or close. In
Purki, monosyllabic words
which are open with vowels are not found (except e ‘that’). All the
monosyliabic open words are found with one or more consonants preceding the
vowel.