proto-southwestern-tai revised: a new reconstruction - seals 22

Ende Phonology 211
Table 2.5: Syllable shapes
V arhé /a�e/ ‘to fly’
CV baba /baba/ ‘father’
CVː naa /naː/ ‘this’
Roots in Ende are most always monosyllabic or disyllabic; only some native roots
have three syllables, but these are most commonly borrowed words. Single syllable words
must minimally be bimoraic. That is, monosyllabic words must have either a long vowel or
in some cases show a diphthong. Only clitics can appear as monomoraic, but these are
phonologically dependent (see §2.3). The possible word shapes are exemplified in Table
2.6.
Table 2.6: Word shapes
Vː é [eː] ‘to think’
V.V éa [eya] ‘cucumber’
CVː naa [naː] ‘this’
V.CV arhé [a�e] ‘to fly’
CV.V ngaé [ŋae] ‘to pick’
CV.CV moki [moki] ‘mouth’
CV.CV.CV tumbé'é [tumbeɁe] ‘really’
Finally, stress in Ende falls on the penultimate syllable, unless the penultimate syllable
contains a schwa. In that case, stress falls on the ultimate syllable. Stress is usually marked
by an increase in intensity and vowel length.
2.3 Clitics 7
Ende, like other Austronesian languages of Flores, is an extremely isolating language that
does not show any evidence of prefixes or suffixes. However, there do appear to be a
number of clitics, or phonologically dependent words that attach at the phrase or clause
level (see Zwicky, 1977). In Ende, all clitics appear to be function words or come from
closed word classes. However, this correlation is not possible in the other direction where
many function words are not considered clitics. The defining characteristics of clitics in
Ende are: 1) clitics are one only syllable, 2) clitics have a phonetically short vowel, and 3)
clitics are always unstressed. Clitics in Ende can either be enclitics or proclitics. The
following sections outline some of the phonological properties of clitics. The following
sections do not provide a complete grammatical account or provide a survey of all the
clitics in Ende.
2.3.1 Enclitics
One clear distinction between the phonological word and the clitic in Ende is seen in the
proximal demonstrative na ‘this’. Depending on the placement in the sentence, the
demonstrative can be considered a phonological word or a clitic. For example, the
demonstrative emerges as a phonological word, i.e., it has a long vowel naa, in (1a), when
7 In only this section, some long vowels are represented by doubling the vowel, i.e., if is a long vowel it
is represented as . This is only used to make clear the difference between clitics and phonological
words.