Phoneme inventory Syllable structure The syllable in Munduruku is made up of an obligatory vocalic nucleus and one of four phonemic accents (three of
pitch and one of laryngealization). It may also have an
onset or
coda. No
consonant clusters are permitted. Thus, the permissible syllables are CV, CVC, V, and VC (with V being the most rare).
Onset The onset in this language may be any one of the 16 consonant phonemes which contrast as to the manner and
point of articulation: (1) voiceless stops ; (2) voiced stops ; (3) fricatives ; (4) nasals ; and (5) sonorants .
Coda The only segment not allowed in the coda is . Observe that CVj and CVw and not CV.V ones are considered CVC syllables for a variety of reasons; one is that it would require positing a new syllable pattern limited to CVu and CVi with no other vowels occurring in coda position. There is also a phonetic contrast between as vowel nuclei and as codas, the former being distinctly vocalic and the latter consonantal.
Nucleus The syllabic nucleus is limited to only one vowel.
Accent Accent is considered a feature of the entire syllable rather than of the nucleus only. One accent occurs with each syllable. Note that the functional load of accent is light—only some 40 lexical pairs with contrastive accents have been found, and few grammatical contrasts are marked by accent alone. == Syntax ==