Syllable Structure and Rhythm in Urama

This study is an investigation into the syllable structure and rhythmic properties of Urama, an undocumented, indigenous Papuan language of New Guinea. Syllable structure in Urama is characteristic of most Papuan languages – onsets are simple, codas are prohibited, and long sequences of vowels are common. Acoustic examination of pilot data revealed considerable differences in syllable duration, ranging from 91 to 446 ms. In addition, Urama also lacks systematic word-stress. Such observations have obvious implications for studies exploring rhythm and timing: The considerable differences in syllable durations rule out the possibility of a syllable-timed prosodic system for the language, and the lack of word-stress implies the prosodic system cannot follow a stress-timed pattern, either. The third remaining possibility is that the language is mora-timed (Port et al. 1987, Otake et al. 1993). Ramus et al. (1999) point out that there are typological properties of languages that are predicted on the basis of their rhythmic profile. Mora-timed languages are predicted to have simple syllables and little to no consonant clustering, and also to tend to be tonal languages. Urama exhibits simple syllables, with a (C)V template. In addition, it is likely that Urama makes use of a sophisticated pitch-accent system of tone (cf. Donohue 1997 for an analysis of the related language Arigibi). The challenge inherent in a moraic analysis, however, is the fact that there are no durational contrasts in the language. Thus, in order to test the hypothesis that Urama is mora-timed but with a phonology that is ambivalent to the mora, the durational patterns of syllables containing potential bimoraic segments (i.e. diphthongs) were compared to syllables with unambiguously monomoraic segments. While standard approaches to rhythm attempt to control for speech rate by having speakers read sentences of a fixed syllable count (cf. Ramus et al. 1999, Ramus 2002), the methods here differ in that a narrative was recorded and analyzed. The possibility of employing such a method is noted in Ramus (2002); however, this prevents any kind of cross-linguistic comparisons. Since the relative durations of vowels in Urama (as opposed to other languages) are the key element in determining whether the language is mora-timed, though, observing average durations is methodologically justified. Pilot data from the first three minutes of a single narrative from a female speaker of Urama were observed. Preliminary results from measurements taken from running speech indicate that syllables with diphthongs are systematically longer than syllables …