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{{Short description|Phonological unit}}{{more footnotes|date=May 2012}}A mora (plural morae or moras; often symbolized μ) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ba consists of one mora (monomoraic), while a long syllable such as baa consists of two (bimoraic); extra-long syllables with three moras (trimoraic) are relatively rare. Such metrics are also referred to as syllable weight.The term comes from the Latin word for 'linger, delay', which was also used to translate the Greek word : ('time') in its metrical sense.

Formation

The general principles for assigning moras to segments are as follows (see Hayes 1989JOURNAL, Hayes, Bruce, 1989, Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology, Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 2, 253–306, JSTOR, and Hyman 1985BOOK, Hyman, Larry,weblink A theory of phonological weight, 1985-12-31, De Gruyter, 978-3-11-085479-4, 10.1515/9783110854794, for detailed discussion):

1. A syllable onset (the first consonant or consonants of the syllable) does not represent any mora.
2. The syllable nucleus represents one mora in the case of a short vowel, and two morae in the case of a long vowel or diphthong. Consonants serving as syllable nuclei also represent one mora if short and two if long. Slovak is an example of a language that has both long and short consonantal nuclei.
3. In some languages (for example, Latin and Japanese), the coda represents one mora, and in others (for example, Irish) it does not. In English, the coda of a stressed syllable represents a mora (thus, the word cat is bimoraic), but {{citation needed span|for unstressed syllables it is not clear whether this is true (the second syllable of the word rabbit might be monomoraic).|date=December 2022}}
4. 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 be trimoraic (syllables exhibiting pluti in 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 as Old English and present-day English, can have syllables with up to four morae.{{sfn|Hogg|1992|p=96}}A prosodic stress system in which moraically heavy syllables are assigned stress is said to have the property of quantity sensitivity.BOOK, Crystal, David, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics 6th ed., 2008, Blackwell Publishing, 978-1-4051-5296-9, 10.1002/9781444302776,

Languages

Ancient Greek

{{Further|Ancient Greek accent}}For the purpose of determining accent in Ancient Greek, short vowels have one mora, and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus long ē (eta: ) can be understood as a sequence of two short vowels: ee.The Inflectional Accent in Indo-European. Paul Kiparsky. Language. Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1973), pp. 794–849. Linguistic Society of America.Ancient Greek pitch accent is placed on only one mora in a word. An acute (, ) represents high pitch on the only mora of a short vowel or the last mora of a long vowel (é, eé). A circumflex () represents high pitch on the first mora of a long vowel (ée).

English

In Old English, short diphthongs and monophthongs were monomoraic, long diphthongs and monophthongs were bimoraic, consonants ending a syllable were each one mora, and geminate consonants added a mora to the preceding syllable. In Modern English, the rules are similar, except that all diphthongs are bimoraic. In English, and probably also in Old English, syllables cannot have more than four morae, with loss of sounds occurring if a syllable would have more than four otherwise. From the Old English period through to today, all content words must be at least two morae long.{{sfn|Hogg|1992|pp=95–98}}

Gilbertese

Gilbertese, an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati, is a trimoraic language.Juliette Blevins and Sheldon P. Harrison. "Trimoraic Feet in Gilbertese". Oceanic Linguistics, vol. 38, No. 2, December 1999. The typical foot in 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."

Hawaiian

In Hawaiian, 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 a diphthong, such as oi, consists of two morae, stress may fall only on the first, a restriction not found with other vowel sequences such as io. That is, there is a distinction between oi, a bimoraic syllable, and io, which is two syllables.

Japanese

{{See also|On (Japanese prosody)}}Most dialects of Japanese, including the standard, use morae, known in Japanese as () or (), rather than syllables, as the basis of the sound system. Writing Japanese in kana (hiragana and katakana) demonstrates a moraic system of writing. For example, in the two-syllable word , the ō is a long vowel and counts as two morae. The word is written in three symbols, , corresponding here to , each containing one mora. Therefore, the 5/7/5 pattern of the haiku in modern Japanese is of morae rather than syllables.The Japanese syllable-final n is also moraic, as is the first part of a geminate consonant. For example, the Japanese name for Japan, , has two different pronunciations, one with three morae () and one with four (). In the hiragana spelling, the three morae of are represented by three characters (), and the four morae of need four characters to be written out as . The latter can also be analysed as , with the Q representing a full mora of silence. In this analysis, っ (the sokuon) indicates a one-mora period of silence.Similarly, the names Tōkyō (, ), Ōsaka (, ), and Nagasaki (, ) 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 of graphemes when written in kana; for example, even though it has four morae, the Japanese name for () is written with five graphemes, because one of these graphemes () represents a yōon, a feature of the Japanese writing system that indicates that the preceding consonant is palatalized.The "contracted sound" () is represented by the three small kana for (), (), (). These do not represent a mora by themselves and attach to other kana; all the rest of the graphemes represent a on their own.Most dialects of Japanese are pitch accent languages, and these pitch accents are also based on morae.There is a unique set of known as "special mora" () which cannot be pronounced by itself but still counts as one mora whenever present. These consist of "nasal sound" () represented by the kana for n (), the "geminate consonant" () represented by the small tsu (), the "long sound" () represented by the long vowel symbol () or a single vowel which extends the sound of the previous () and the "diphthong" () represented by the second vowel of two consecutive vowels ().WEB, 東外大言語モジュール｜日本語｜発音｜実践編{{!, 1 サバイバルのためにこれだけは 1.10.1 拍感覚基礎|url=http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/mt/ja/pmod/practical/01-10-01.php|access-date=2021-07-18|website=www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp}}This set also has the peculiarity that the drop in pitch of a word (so-called "downstep") cannot come after any of these "special mora" under any conditions (barring only a couple of extreme examples, namely コーン茶 and チェーン店NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典), which is especially useful for learners of the language trying to learn the accent of words.WEB, 東外大言語モジュール｜日本語｜発音｜実践編{{!, 3 ネイティブ並の発音を身につけるために 3.1.1 拍とアクセント|url=http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/mt/ja/pmod/practical/03-01-01.php|access-date=2021-07-18|website=www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp}}

Luganda

In Luganda, a short vowel constitutes one mora while a long vowel constitutes two morae. A simple consonant has no morae, and a doubled or prenasalised consonant has one. No syllable may contain more than three morae. The tone system in Luganda is based on morae. See Luganda tones and Luganda grammar.

Sanskrit

In Sanskrit, the mora is expressed as the .{{Sfn|Horace Hayman Wilson|1841|p=427}}{{Sfn|Hopkins|1901|p=193}}BOOK, Andrew Ollett, Nina Mirnig, Peter-Daniel Szanto, Michael Williams, Puspika: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions,weblink 2013, Oxbow Books, 978-1-84217-385-5, 331–358, For example, the short vowel a (pronounced like a schwa) is assigned a value of one , the long vowel is assigned a value of two s, 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 two s.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} In addition, there is (trimoraic) and ('long ' = quadrimoraic).Sanskrit prosody and metrics have a deep history of taking into account moraic weight, as it were, rather than straight syllables, divided into (, 'light') and / (/, 'heavy') feet based on how many morae can be isolated in each word.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} Thus, for example, the word (), meaning 'agent' or 'doer', does not contain simply two syllabic units, but contains rather, in order, a / foot and a foot. The reason is that the conjoined consonants rt render the normally light ka syllable heavy.

See also

• Chroneme
• Compensatory lengthening
• Dreimorengesetz
• On (Japanese prosody)
• Pitch accent
• Syllable

Notes

{{Reflist}}

References

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

External links

• {{wiktionary-inline|mora}}

{{Suprasegmentals}}{{Authority control}}