Hawaiian Phonology - Phonotactics

Phonotactics

Hawaiian syllables may contain one consonant in the onset, or there is no onset. Syllables with no onset contrast with syllables beginning with the glottal stop: /alo/ ('front', 'face') contrasts with /ʔalo/ ('to dodge', 'evade'). Codas and consonant clusters are prohibited in the phonotactics of Hawaiian words of Austronesian origin. However, the borrowed word Kristo is pronounced . One exception is the Hawaiian interjection kā, because it can be pronounced or .

The syllable has a minimum of one vowel, and a maximum of two. A one-vowel syllable has any one of the short or long vowels. A two-vowel syllable has any one of the diphthongs.

The structure of the Hawaiian syllable can be represented as being (C)V(V), where the round brackets around C and second V mean that the syllable-initial consonant is optional and the syllable may have a long vowel or diphthong.

• V syllables. Every theoretically possible V syllable occurs in Hawaiian.

• CV syllables. Every theoretically possible CV syllable occurs, with the single exception of wū ). The syllable wu occurs only in borrowed words. There are only two such words, with wu, in the Pukui-Elbert dictionary: Wulekake (or Vulegate) ('Vulgate'), and wulekula (or vuletura 'vulture'), the very last Hawaiian headwords listed in the dictionary.

Elbert & Pukui have pointed out that "Certain combinations of sounds are absent or rare." For example, no content word has the form CVVʔV, and the form CVVCV, is also not common. They also noted that monovocalic content words are always long.