Syllable structure and phonotactic constraints 27
‘what’, and so on, particularly when occurring before a significant pause. This
is, however, unrelated to Indonesian words with a final /h/. Pawitra (2009) in-
cludes many examples in his dictionary.
As touched on in section 2, schwa can occur only in closed syllables, and
this includes the higher counterpart [ɨ]; as shown in section 4, the restriction of
[] and [ɨ] to closed syllables can induce gemination. Examples of [ə] and [ɨ]
include,
(16) [d.ɤtə] ‘come’
[əmpa] ‘four’
[maɲəssəl] ‘regret’
[s] ‘ring’
[bɨcc] ‘good’
[bɨrri] ‘give’
[pəkkɨl] ‘angry’
Generally speaking, nasals must be homorganic with a following stop.
Dental nasals occur adjacent to both dental and retroflex stops.
(17) [əmpa] ‘four’ [tampɤ] ‘mine’ [ambu] ‘stop’
[manɔ] ‘son-in-law’ [kanɤs] ‘run aground’ [səndu] ‘difference’
[kalɛnṭɔ] ‘handcuffs’ [manṭ] ‘bathe’ [tanḍəs] ‘fast’
[kaɲca] ‘friend’ [əɲcɤk] ‘pedal’ [giɲu] ‘lively’
[sɛkɔ] ‘I’ [akuj] ‘use’ [agɤ] ‘conceited
There are a small number of exceptions to this; for the most part, these are in-
stances involving the velar nasal, such as [aa] ‘dance’, [brubuan]
‘sheath’, [bɤrɤa] ‘infatuated’, [palɛpɛ] ‘deaf’, [aɤ] ‘unequal’,[karat.
ɔt.ə] ‘without family’, [curucɤ] ‘a type of tall grass’.^14 In root words that
are not borrowed, [l], [r], and [s] are preceded almost exclusively by the velar
nasal, there being only a handful of instances in which they are preceded by [m]
(^14) Some of the instances which are clearly not reduplicated roots are being regularized.
So ‘dance’ often surfaces as [aa], which is given as the entry in Safioedin’s (1977)
dictionary. However, Masharudin’s (2000) dictionary gives the entry as [aa], and
Stevens (1968) cites this form as well. (Pawitra (2009) includes entries for both forms.)
These are not instances of reduplication, as the onset of the first syllable is unaspirated
[and the onset of the second is aspirated ].