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consonant to be lower in sonority than the following sonorant (i.e. adhering to the SSP).
In most cases, Mono included, this initial consonant is an obstruent.
In his rendition of phonemics, Pike assumes that sounds in a given language are
subdivided into two major groups: consonants and vowels. 3 In the positing of
unambiguous syllable patterns, then, the researcher is forced to label the elements within
a syllable as either C or V. This ignores the cross-linguistic tendency for languages to
have syllable patterns which obey the SSP, such as OSV (O = obstruent, S = sonorant).
Jakobson allowed for the inclusion of canonical syllable patterns of this type in a
phonemic analysis. Olson & Schrag suggest that OSV syllables should be considered
unambiguous in cases where other possible interpretations are exhausted. 4
There are at least two problems with the Olson & Schrag account. First, it
accounts for neither the co-occurrence restrictions between the secondary articulations
and the preceding consonants nor the co-occurrence restrictions between the secondary
articulations and the following vowel. As Bendor-Samuel (1962: 87) points out, these
restrictions must be stated in addition to accepting the additional syllable pattern.
Second, while this account essentially treats the secondary articulations as the two
semi-vowel phonemes w and j occurring in a unique position in the syllable, it should be
remembered that there is a clear phonetic difference between the secondary articulations
and the regular articulations of the semi-vowels. As pointed out above, the secondary
articulations are more mid than high in the height dimension (i.e. ['] and [A']), whereas
the semi-vowels w and j are high.
3 For example, in referring to consonants and vowels, Pike (1947: 60) states, “In every language
there are two main groups of sounds which have sharply different distributions.”
4 One interesting investigation, beyond the scope of this dissertation, would be a typological study
to determine of there are any implicational universals regarding OSV syllable patterns. Specifically, if a
language has OLV patterns, will it necessarily also have OGV syllables?
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