Mora (linguistics)

Amora(pluralmoraeormoras;often symbolizedμ) is a smallest unit oftiming,equal to or shorter than asyllable,that theoretically or perceptually exists in some spoken languages in whichphonetic length(such asvowel length) matters significantly. For example, in theJapanese language,the name of the cityŌsaka(おおさか) consists of three syllables (O-sa-ka) but four morae (O-o-sa-ka), since the first syllable,Ō,is pronounced with along vowel(the others being short). Thus, a short vowel contains one mora and is calledmonomoraic,while a long vowel contains two and is calledbimoraic.Extra-long syllables with three morae (trimoraic) are relatively rare. Such metrics based on syllables are also referred to assyllable weight.In Japanese, certain consonants also stand on their own as individual morae and thus are monomoraic.

The term comes from theLatinword for 'linger, delay', which was also used to translate the Greek wordχρόνος:chrónos('time') in itsmetricalsense.

Formation

The general principles for assigning moras to segments are as follows (seeHayes1989^[1]andHyman1985^[2]for detailed discussion):

Asyllable onset(the firstconsonantor consonants of the syllable) does not represent any mora.
Thesyllable nucleusrepresents one mora in the case of a short vowel, and two morae in the case of a long vowel ordiphthong.Consonants serving as syllable nuclei also represent one mora if short and two if long.Slovakis an example of a language that has both long and short consonantal nuclei.
In some languages (for example,LatinandJapanese), thecodarepresents one mora, and in others (for example,Irish) it does not.
In some languages, a syllable with a long vowel or diphthong in the nucleus and one or more consonants in the coda is said to betrimoraic(syllables exhibitingplutiin Sanskrit).

In general, monomoraic syllables are called "light syllables", bimoraic syllables are called "heavy syllables", and trimoraic syllables (in languages that have them) are called "superheavy syllables". Some languages, such asOld Englishand potentially present-day English, can have syllables with up to four morae.^[3]

Aprosodicstress system in which moraically heavy syllables are assigned stress is said to have the property of quantity sensitivity.^[4]

Languages

Ancient Greek

For the purpose of determining accent inAncient Greek,short vowels have one mora, and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus longē(eta:η) can be understood as a sequence of two short vowels:ee.^[5]

Ancient Greek pitch accent is placed on only one mora in a word. Anacute(έ,ή) represents high pitch on the only mora of a short vowel or the last mora of a long vowel (é,eé). Acircumflex(ῆ) represents high pitch on the first mora of a long vowel (ée).

Gilbertese

Gilbertese,anAustronesian languagespoken mainly inKiribati,is a trimoraic language.^[6]The typicalfootin Gilbertese contains three morae. These trimoraic constituents are units of stress in Gilbertese. These "ternary metrical constituents of the sort found in Gilbertese are quite rare cross-linguistically, and as far as we know, Gilbertese is the only language in the world reported to have a ternary constraint on prosodic word size."^[7]

Hawaiian

InHawaiian,both syllables and morae are important. Stress falls on the penultimate mora, though in words long enough to have two stresses, only the final stress is predictable. However, although adiphthong,such asoi,consists of two morae, stress may fall only on the first, a restriction not found with other vowel sequences such asio.That is, there is a distinction betweenoi,a bimoraic syllable, andio,which is two syllables.

Japanese

Most dialects ofJapanese,including the standard, use morae, known in Japanese ashaku(Phách) ormōra(モーラ), rather than syllables, as the basis of the sound system. Writing Japanese inkana(hiraganaandkatakana) demonstrates a moraic system of writing. For example, in the two-syllable wordmōra,theōis a longvoweland counts as two morae. The word is written in three symbols,モーラ,corresponding here tomo-o-ra,each containing one mora. Therefore, the 5/7/5 pattern of thehaikuin modern Japanese is of morae rather than syllables.

The Japanese syllable-finalnis also moraic, as is the first part of ageminate consonant.For example, the Japanese name forJapan,Nhật bổn,has two different pronunciations, one with three morae (Nihon) and one with four (Nippon). In the hiragana spelling, the three morae ofNi-ho-nare represented by three characters (にほん), and the four morae ofNi-p-po-nneed four characters to be written out asにっぽん.The latter can also be analysed asNi-Q-po-n,with the Q representing a full mora of silence. In this analysis, っ (thesokuon) indicates a one-mora period of silence.

Similarly, the namesTōkyō(To-u-kyo-u,とうきょう),Ōsaka(O-o-sa-ka,おおさか), andNagasaki(Na-ga-sa-ki,ながさき) all have four morae, even though, on this analysis, they have two, three and four syllables, respectively. The number of morae in a word is not always equal to the number ofgraphemeswhen written in kana; for example, even though it has four morae, the Japanese name forTōkyō(とうきょう) is written with five graphemes, because one of these graphemes (ょ) represents ayōon,a feature of the Japanese writing system that indicates that the preceding consonant ispalatalized.

The "contracted sound" (Ảo âm) is represented by the three small kana forya(ゃ),yu(ゅ),yo(ょ). These do not represent a mora by themselves and attach to other kana; all the rest of the graphemes represent amōraon their own.

Most dialects of Japanese arepitch accentlanguages, and thesepitch accentsare also based on morae.

There is a unique set ofmōraknown as "special mora" (Đặc thù phách) which cannot be pronounced by itself but still counts as one mora whenever present. These consist of "nasal sound" (Bát âm) represented by the kana forn(ん), the "geminate consonant" (Xúc âm) represented by the small tsu (っ), the "long sound" (Trường âm) represented by the long vowel symbol (ー) or a single vowel which extends the sound of the previousmōra(びょ “う” いん) and the "diphthong" (Nhị trọng mẫu âm) represented by the second vowel of two consecutive vowels (ばあ “い”).^[8]

This set also has the peculiarity that, (barring only a couple of extreme examples, namely コーン trà and チェーン điếm^[9]), the drop in pitch of a word (so-called "downstep" ) cannot come after any of these "special mora," a useful tidbit for language learners trying to learn word pitch accents.^[10]

Luganda

InLuganda,ashort vowelconstitutes one mora while along vowelconstitutes two morae. A simpleconsonanthas no morae, and adoubledorprenasalised consonanthas one. Nosyllablemay contain more than three morae. The tone system in Luganda is based on morae. SeeLuganda tonesandLuganda grammar.

Old English

In Old English, short diphthongs and monophthongs were monomoraic, long diphthongs and monophthongs were bimoraic, consonants ending a syllable were each one mora, andgeminateconsonants added a mora to the preceding syllable. If Modern English is analyzed in terms of morae at all, which is contentious, the rules would be similar, except that all diphthongs would be considered bimoraic. Probably in Old English, like in Modern English, syllables could not have more than four morae, with loss of sounds occurring if a syllable would have more than four otherwise. In the Old English period, allcontent words(as well as stressed monosyllables) had to be at least two morae long.^[11]

Sanskrit

InSanskrit,the mora is expressed as themātrā.^[12]^[13]^[14]For example, the short vowela(pronounced like aschwa) is assigned a value of onemātrā,the long vowelāis assigned a value of twomātrās, and the compound vowel (diphthong)ai(which has either two simple short vowels,a+i,or one long and one short vowel,ā+i) is assigned a value of twomātrās.^{[citation needed]}In addition, there ispluta(trimoraic) anddīrgha pluta('longpluta' = quadrimoraic).

Sanskrit prosody and metrics have a deep history of taking into account moraic weight, as it were, rather than straight syllables, divided intolaghu(लघु,'light') anddīrgha/guru(दीर्घ/गुरु,'heavy') feet based on how many morae can be isolated in each word.^{[citation needed]}Thus, for example, the wordkartṛ(कर्तृ), meaning 'agent' or 'doer', does not contain simply two syllabic units, but contains rather, in order, adīrgha/gurufootand alaghufoot. The reason is that the conjoinedconsonantsrtrender the normally lightkasyllableheavy.

Notes

^Hayes, Bruce (1989). "Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology".Linguistic Inquiry.20(2):253–306.
^Hyman, Larry (1985-12-31).A theory of phonological weight.De Gruyter.doi:10.1515/9783110854794.ISBN 978-3-11-085479-4.
^Hogg 1992,p. 96.
^Crystal, David (2008).A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics 6th ed.Blackwell Publishing.doi:10.1002/9781444302776.ISBN 978-1-4051-5296-9.
^Kiparsky, Paul (1973)."The Inflectional Accent in Indo-European".Language.49(4):794–849.doi:10.2307/412064.JSTOR 412064.
^Juliette Blevinsand Sheldon P. Harrison. "Trimoraic Feet in Gilbertese".Oceanic Linguistics,vol. 38, No. 2, December 1999.
^Blevins & Harrison 1999, p. 203
^Đông ngoại đại ngôn ngữ モジュール| nhật bổn ngữ | phát âm | thật tiễn biên | 1 サバイバルのためにこれだけは 1.10.1 phách cảm 覚 cơ sở.Language Centre of Excellence -Tokyo University of Foreign Studies(in Japanese).Retrieved2021-07-18.
^NHK nhật bổn ngữ phát âm アクセント tân từ điển
^Đông ngoại đại ngôn ngữ モジュール| nhật bổn ngữ | phát âm | thật tiễn biên | 3 ネイティブ tịnh の phát âm を thân につけるために 3.1.1 phách とアクセント.Language Centre of Excellence -Tokyo University of Foreign Studies(in Japanese).Retrieved2021-07-18.
^Hogg 1992,pp. 95–98.
^Horace Hayman Wilson 1841,p. 427.
^Hopkins 1901,p. 193.
^Andrew Ollett (2013). Nina Mirnig; Peter-Daniel Szanto; Michael Williams (eds.).Puspika: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions.Oxbow Books. pp.331–358.ISBN 978-1-84217-385-5.

References

Clark, John; Collin Yallop;Janet Fletcher(2007).Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology(3rd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.ISBN 978-1-4051-3083-7.
Horace Hayman Wilson (1841).An introduction to the grammar of the Sanskrit language.Madden.
Hogg, Richard (1992). "3 Phonology and Morphology". In Hogg, Richard (ed.).The Cambridge History of the English Language.Vol. 1. University Press, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp.67–167.doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521264747.004.ISBN 978-0-521-26474-7.
Hopkins, E.W. (1901). "Epic versification".The Great Epic of India.New York: C. Scribner's Sons.LCCN

External links

The dictionary definition ofmoraat Wiktionary

[1] Hayes, Bruce (1989). "Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology".Linguistic Inquiry.20(2):253–306.

[2] Hyman, Larry (1985-12-31).A theory of phonological weight.De Gruyter.doi:10.1515/9783110854794.ISBN 978-3-11-085479-4.

[FOOTNOTEHogg199296-3] Hogg 1992,p. 96.

[4] Crystal, David (2008).A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics 6th ed.Blackwell Publishing.doi:10.1002/9781444302776.ISBN 978-1-4051-5296-9.

[5] Kiparsky, Paul (1973)."The Inflectional Accent in Indo-European".Language.49(4):794–849.doi:10.2307/412064.JSTOR 412064.

[6] Juliette Blevinsand Sheldon P. Harrison. "Trimoraic Feet in Gilbertese".Oceanic Linguistics,vol. 38, No. 2, December 1999.

[7] Blevins & Harrison 1999, p. 203

[8] Đông ngoại đại ngôn ngữ モジュール| nhật bổn ngữ | phát âm | thật tiễn biên | 1 サバイバルのためにこれだけは 1.10.1 phách cảm 覚 cơ sở.Language Centre of Excellence -Tokyo University of Foreign Studies(in Japanese).Retrieved2021-07-18.

[9] NHK nhật bổn ngữ phát âm アクセント tân từ điển

[10] Đông ngoại đại ngôn ngữ モジュール| nhật bổn ngữ | phát âm | thật tiễn biên | 3 ネイティブ tịnh の phát âm を thân につけるために 3.1.1 phách とアクセント.Language Centre of Excellence -Tokyo University of Foreign Studies(in Japanese).Retrieved2021-07-18.

[FOOTNOTEHogg199295–98-11] Hogg 1992,pp. 95–98.

[FOOTNOTEHorace_Hayman_Wilson1841427-12] Horace Hayman Wilson 1841,p. 427.

[FOOTNOTEHopkins1901193-13] Hopkins 1901,p. 193.

[14] Andrew Ollett (2013). Nina Mirnig; Peter-Daniel Szanto; Michael Williams (eds.).Puspika: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions.Oxbow Books. pp.331–358.ISBN 978-1-84217-385-5.

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