Coda Lidencing

The first question about this topic would be: Why would a word-final consonant have to be syllabified in an onset, and not in a normal post-nuclear rhymal complement (Coda) position. After all, we have this position in word internally, and this Coda is so important as it differs some languages to others called "CV languages".

First of all, Coda is an old term, back to the time that all consonants which occur after a nucleus could be simply attached to the rhyme in the form:

(1)

,where C could even accommodate 2 consonants when N is neither a long vowel nor a heavy diphthong. Nowadays, Coda is more accurately called rhymal complement, to accentuate the fact that it is not a constituent, while onset and nuclear are.

Why can't a word end in a consonant?

If we observe the way languages behave, so many exceptions seem to occur in the word-final "Coda", every rules about how it should normally behaves is so frequently broken that leads us to the question whether this "Coda" could be defined as such.

1- The case of vowel shortening rule.

Basically, long vowels are shortened in a closed syllable (Kaye). And here are some examples to illustrate this proposition.

Ex: French, chat [Sa:] and chatte [Sat]

Yawelmani, [sa:pit] and [sapnit]

In both cases above, the vowels are shortened to accommodate a consonant in its rhymal complement position, because we know that there is no long vowel or heavy diphthong in a branching rhyme.

But in cases when the consonant which occurs after long vowel is also situate at the end of the word, this rule is not observe.

Ex: French, vert [ve:r] and verdure [verdu:r] English, keep [ki:p], and green [gri:n]

(2)

Those examples shows violation of the above rule stated where no coda could be accommodated into a rhyme with long vowel or heavydiphthong.

2- The case of word-finally consonant cluster.

Words in English like kept, child, findÐ'...pose several problems in phonological analysis.

First problem would be the rule about "no branching coda in a branching rhyme", the second would be the nature of consonant clusters; consonant like pt, ld, rtÐ'... are not the normal consonant cluster so-called well-formed cluster, the well-formed cluster in a language could be easily spotted in a branching onset. If we could not find them at the beginning of any English word, there is a big chance that they are not a good cluster, so we can separate them into two different syllable if found in middle of a word, the natural order of two consonant occurring next to each other must be respected, re-syllabification is not possible. But in word finally, where could the second half of this ill-formed cluster position itself? The easiest solution is to stick it with the rest, giving us something like this:

(3)

To sum up those affirmations, the early Coda licensing would be the fact that the coda position in a syllable could behave differently if it occurs in word finally:

- No long vowel in a branching rhyme with the exception of word-finally coda.

- No branching coda in a branching rhyme with the exception of word-finally coda.

- Re-syllabification is not possible due to respect of well-formed consonant cluster, with the exception of word-finally coda.

3- Explanation.

.Early explanation for this phenomenon had been introduced in the 70s by Halle&Vergnaud when analysing the Germanic languages. They propose a new extra-rhythmal constituent called the appendix to explain a different problem, the skewing of consonant distribution in Germanic languages in word-final position.

.In the 80s, Charette use this notion of appendix to assume that a final consonant is not situated in the rhyme, but in the appendix, therefore there was no violation of rules.

Ex: vert, and verte in French,

(4)

So, until late the 80s, a word could end with a consonant.

.However, in 1990, Kaye has gone further to understand this phenomenon, as he thinks that the notion of appendix, while it satisfied the need explaining how vowel shorten in some languages, the 90s came with fuller theory of phonological government, this analysis is no longer sufficient.

In the 90s, a theory about phonological strings is proposed, called phonological government, after Kay, "it defines under what condition two phonological positions may be viewed as adjacent." And that those positions are linked in a relation called Licensing, which obey a certain principle.

- All phonological positions within a domain except one must be licensed, and this unlicensed position is the domain's head.

- Government is one form of license, parameter is another form

- Condition for A to governs B is:

a. A and B strictly adjacent (no position could intervene between them on their projection)

b. A and B must obey a strict given direction (constituent government: left to right; transconstituent government: right to left).

By deduction, we could deduct two more theorems:

i. Binarity theorem: all syllabic constituents are maximally binary (otherwise it would violate the strict directionality or strict adjacency), and

ii. The head of a domain is always a nucleus (due to its far-right position).

Within a constituent, the governor need to be more complicated in its composition than its governee in other to justify its position, a good governor is often