Syllable Structure and the Mora

Abstract

Representational theories of syllable structure can be broadly classified into two types, (i) segmentcentered approaches and (ii) syllable-centered approaches. This paper provides a summary of the motivations behind the use of syllable constituent categories in each theory type, with concurrent discussions of how moraicity is encoded in representations. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates how the categories corresponding to moraicity are employed in the analysis of Japanese loanword accentuation. Through this study, I aim to arrive at a more justified syllabic representation which reflects the extent to which it eliminates redundancy in representations and explicitly reveals causal relationships in phonological phenomena.