The Sesquisyllable as a Disyllabic Word

traditionally defined as a type of word comprising one fully formed (major) syllable and one phonologically reduced (minor) syllable. Previous analyses (Cho and King 2003, Gussmann 2007, et al) have attempted to show that there is some phonological structure unique to minor syllables which differentiates them from major syllables. However, I argue that words generally considered to be sesquisyllables are in fact ordinary disyllabic words in which the minor syllable is subject to more stringent markedness constraints than is the major syllable. Minor syllables are generally characterized by a reduced phonemic inventory, reduced syllable structure (CV, not CVC) and alignment with the left edge of the prosodic word, among other things. I focus on three Southeast Asian languages, Kammu (Svantesson and Karlsson 2004), Burmese (Green 2005) and Bunong (via my own investigation), within an Optimality Theoretic framework (Prince and Smolensky 2004). I claim that these phonological effects can be accomplished through highly ranked markedness constraints, outranked by faithfulness constraints which target prosodically prominent positions (Beckman 2004). For example, in Burmese only reduced vowels are allowed in minor syllables, while all vowels are allowed in stressed syllables, as in (1). This is accomplished by positing a markedness constraint agains