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Noun compounding is a very common process in Mono. Many nouns in my
corpus which have two or more syllables are compounds, and it is likely that additional
nouns listed in Appendix B as monomorphemic will turn out to be multimorphemic given
further research. This would provide additional evidence that most Mono nouns are of the
shorter forms mentioned above.
Mono lacks monosyllabic nouns, i.e. ones with a V or CV word pattern. It thus
appears that there is a MC in Mono preventing nouns of less than two syllables. 3 Hockett
(1958: 288-9) suggests that a similar MC in Fijian is due to the limited inventory of Cs
and Vs in that language. However, that explanation is not possible for Mono, which has a
robust inventory of both Cs and Vs.
The following evidence lends additional support for a MC on Mono nouns. First,
Mono contains a rather large number of nouns with a V1CV1 word pattern in which both
Vs are identical in quality and in tone in careful speech (2): 4
(2) Sample V1CV1 nouns in Mono
a. ~ ~ ‘tooth’
b. @ @ @ @ ~ @ @ @ @
‘horn’
c. (CK( (CK( (CK( (CK( ~ CK( CK( CK( CK( ~ K(CK( K(CK( K(CK( K(CK( ‘water’
d. >A >A >A >A ~ A>A A>A
‘liver’
e. H H H H
‘thing’
f. C C C C ~ C C C C
‘hunger’
g. == == == ==
‘mouth’
h. = = = = ~
‘sun’
The value of the first vowel in each word is predictable given the value of the
second vowel, as discussed below. Since Mono lacks surface monosyllabic nouns, we can
posit an abstract underlying form which does not include the initial vowel of the word:
3 There are two nouns, which could be considered to be bimoraic: >=
>= >= >= ‘priest’ and =( =( =( =( ‘cat’ (loan
from Lingala), but in Section 3.2 I argue that these forms are marginal to the phonological system.
4 Cloarec-Heiss (1978: 21) notes that this group of nouns contains a large proportion of words for
body parts, elements, and instruments. However, this cannot be construed as a semantic class, as nouns
from many other semantic domains are attested here as well.
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