Research Articles

Does Camden Sylheti have consonant clusters?

Author
  • S. Elizabeth Eden

Abstract

By examining the distribution of consonantal segments word-medially in Camden Sylheti, as documented in the SOAS Sylheti Dictionary, I will show that the native lexicon has only (C)V(C) syllables, contrary to previously observed transfer effects seen in Sylheti-English bilinguals. I will briefly discuss repair strategies observed in the Sylheti lexicon for historic loan words, and question which of these are still extant. I will also demonstrate the computational tools which I have developed to help with such analyses.

A simple view of syllable structure is that any sequence of consonants that occurs word-initially is a valid syllable onset, and any sequence that occurs word-finally is a valid coda (Zec 2007). However, a closer cross-linguistic examination shows that consonant distributions may vary between word-edge and word-medial positions (Kaye 1990).

Word-edge consonant sequences in Sylheti are relatively rare. Word-initial clusters are predominantly found in loan words e.g. English [pɾofɛsaɾ], [skʊl] and Sanskrit [gram], [pɾaʃnɔ]. Likewise, most of the final-consonant sequences in the Dictionary are either loan items e.g. [ɡɪfʈ], or morpheme edges which do not surface without a following vowel e.g. [afn-]. However, word-medial consonant sequences are relatively common in the native lexicon.

Word-medial sequences can be divided into valid word-final ...

Keywords: Camden Sylheti, Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, syllable structure

How to Cite:

Eden, S., (2020) “Does Camden Sylheti have consonant clusters?”, Language Documentation and Description 18, 23-41. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd86

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Published on
31 Aug 2020
Peer Reviewed