Minor syllable is a term used primarily in the description of Mon-Khmer languages

Mon-Khmer languages

The Mon–Khmer languages are a language family of Southeast Asia. Together with the Munda languages of India, they are one of the two traditional primary branches of the Austro-Asiatic family...

, where a word typically consists of a reduced (minor) syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

 followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the form /onsonant or /Cəasal consonant, with a reduced vowel, as in colloquial Khmer

Khmer language

Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...

, or of the form /CC/ with no vowel at all, as in Mlabri

Mlabri language

Mlabri is a language spoken by the Mlabri people in the border area between Thailand and Laos.It is usually classified as a Khmuic language, a subgroup of the Austro-Asiatic languages. Linguist Jørgen Rischel has studied the language and described its peculiarities in several works...

 /kn̩diːŋ/ "navel" (minor syllable /kn̩/) and /br̩poːŋ/ "underneath" (minor syllable /br̩/). This iambic pattern is sometimes called sesquisyllabic (lit. 'one and a half syllables'), a term coined by the American linguist James Matisoff

James Matisoff

James A. Matisoff is a professor emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and noted authority on Tibeto-Burman languages and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia....

 in 1973. Outside Mon-Khmer, minor syllables are found in Burmese

Burmese language

The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...

, where in contrast to full syllables they have the form /Cə/, with no consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....

s allowed in the syllable onset, no syllable coda

Syllable coda

In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...

, and no tone

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

.