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word minimality condition preventing monosyllabic lexical words, which is discussed in
Chapter 6.
The presence of the CV1LV1 pattern may have a diachronic explanation. It is
conceivable that Mono had at one time an unambiguous CLV pattern which was
subsequently expanded to CV1LV1. This would explain the large number of words which
exhibit this pattern. Future comparative work is needed to support this hypothesis.
To account for these patterns in a synchronic analysis, we could posit a /CLV/
underlying form and introduce a rule of vowel epenthesis to break up the CL sequence.
This rule can be formalized as follows:
(2) Vowel epenthesis
∅ → V1 / C__LV1
In Section 6.1, we will see that the interaction vowel epenthesis with the word
minimality condition lends additional support to this type of analysis.
This type of syllable patterning is not unique to Mono. Welmers (1973: 26ff)
notes that the orthography of Ewe recognizes CLV syllable shapes, e.g. BA( BA( BA( BA( ‘buy’ and
=C>A =C>A =C>A =C>A ‘farm’, but that tonal evidence indicates there may be a vowel between the C and
L. For example, in J=B J=B J=B (=JIA( (=JIA( (=JIA( (=JIA( ‘excuse me’, there is a High tone at the release of the B
which is distinct from the preceding and following tones. He suggests that the tone
bearing segment be interpreted as E before unrounded vowels and K before rounded
vowels, yielding J=B J=B (=JIA( (=JIA( (=JIA( (=JIA( in the above example. Like Mono, the quality of the vowel
between C and L is predictable from the following vowel.
Goldsmith (1990: 134) points out a mirror image case in Selayarese in which a
phonological word ends in , H, or I underlyingly. Here, a vowel is epenthesized word-
finally which is a copy of the preceding vowel. Thus, /=J=/ ‘itch’ becomes =J== =J==, =J== =J== and
/I/ ‘shake liquid’ becomes I I. I I The fact that the final vowel is predictable
from the preceding vowel is evidence that it is indeed epenthetic. Additional evidence for
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