Urak Lawoi

PHONEME LEVELThis chapter gives a preliminary outline of the structure of the syllable and word, describes the phonetic structures of the various phonemes, and finally shows how the phonemes function in the construction of syllables and words.! Previously I have briefly described the phonemes of the Phuket Old People's (POP) dialect of Urale Lawoi' (Hogan 1976:283-295), while Amon has described the phonemes of the Adang (A D) or Southern dialect (Amon 1979).Section 5 of this chapter will comment on some of the relationships between the three dialects of Urale Lawoi'. Outline of the syllable and word Syllable structureSyllables may be divided into three types: major syllables, minor syllables, and pre-syllables.These types are identified by their place of occurrence in the word, and the vowels and final consonants which occur in them.The major syllable is obligatory and final in every word, so that a mono-syllabic word has a major syllable only.The major syllable may have any consonant or a consonant cluster initially.Any vowel may occur but the vowel lei occurs only with a final Ir/.Any of the final consonants listed in Section 1.4.2. may occur, or there may be no final consonant.The minor syllable and pre-syllable are distinguished from the major syllable by being optional and non-final in any word.Both may have a consonant cluster initially but it is not common in a minor syllable and in my data only occurs once in a pre-syllable.These two types differ on three points: a.The minor syllable can commence with any consonant or zero but the pre-syllable never occurs without an initial consonant.b.The minor syllable has all vowels, but with Ii a ul predominating and lei occurring only with final Irl, while the pre-syllable has only the vocalic transition lei.c.The minor syllable has a limited occurrence of final consonants with only seven consonants appearing in the data.The pre-syllable never has a final consonant. 11The stresses that may occur on these syllable types are described in Section 2.3.3.while other points are described elsewhere in Section 2.3.The structure of the major syllable is (C(C)V or (C(C)Ve.That of the minor syllable is (C(C)V or eve, and the pre-syllable C(C) V. Major syllable: ev /pi/ 'to go' eve /c aq! 'that .. .' eev /bri/ 'to give' eeve /proc/ 'stomach' V /ba.u/ 'smell' ve ret! 'mother' Minor syllable (+ major syllable): ev /ka.nyaw/ 'you' (pI) eve /waq.tu/'time' eev /pra.hu/'boat' V /a.da/ 'to have' Pre-syllable (+ major syllable): ev /te.bak/ 'to chop down' eev /phre.ngan/'swordfish' 2.1.2Word structure UL words may have one, two or three syllables.Apparent exceptions are either compound words or reduplications.Every word must have an obligatory major syllable, and may optionally have one or two syllables preceding the major syllable, which may be either minor syllables or pre-syllables, in various combinations.Some typical words follow: Major syllable only Minor + major Pre-syllable + major Pre-+ pre-+ major Pre-+ minor + major /caq/ /ma.soq/ /me.law

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• Thai-English Student’s Dictionary

  Mary R Haas•Thai-English Student’s Dictionary•1964

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