Mora (linguistics)
Encyclopedia
Mora is a unit in phonology
that determines syllable weight
, which in some languages determines stress
or timing
. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D. McCawley
in 1968: a mora is “Something of which a long syllable consists of two and a short syllable consists of one.” The term comes from the Latin
word for “linger, delay”, which was also used to translate the Greek word chronos (time) in its metrical sense.
A syllable
containing one mora is said to be monomoraic; a syllable with two moras is said to be bimoraic. Also, in rarer cases, a syllable with three moras is said to be trimoraic.
In general, monomoraic syllables are said to be light syllables, bimoraic syllables are said to be heavy syllables, and trimoraic syllables (in languages that have them) are said to be superheavy syllables. Most linguists believe that no language uses syllables containing four or more moras.
. The mora was first expressed in India as the mātrā.
For example, the short vowel "a" ' onMouseout='HidePop("2509")' href="/topics/Schwa">schwa
) is assigned a value of one mātrā, the long vowel "ā" is assigned a value of two mātrās, and the complex vowel "ai" (which is composed of three simple short vowels, namely "a"+"a"+"i", or one long and one short vowel, namely "ā"+"i") is assigned a value of three mātrās.
Sanskrit prosody and metrics have a deep history of taking into account moraic weight, as it were, rather than straight syllables, divided into "laghu" (लघु, "light") and "guru" (गुरु, "heavy") feet based on how many moras can be isolated in each word.
Thus, for example, the word "kartṛi", meaning "agent" or "doer", does not contain, contrary to intuitive English prosodic principles, simply two syllabic units, but contains rather, in order, a "guru"/"heavy" foot and a "laghu"/"light" foot. The reason is that the conjoined consonants 'rt' render the normally light 'ka' syllable
heavy.
, short vowels have one mora, and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus long ē (eta
: η) can be understood as a sequence of two short vowels: ee.
Ancient Greek pitch accent is placed on only one mora in a word. An acute
(έ, ή) represents high pitch on the only mora of a short vowel or the last mora of a long vowel (é, eé). A circumflex
(ῆ) represents high pitch on the first mora of a long vowel (ée).
is a language famous for its moraic qualities. Most dialects, including the standard, use moras (in Japanese, haku (拍) or mōra (モーラ)) rather than syllables as the basis of the sound system.
For example, haiku
in modern Japanese do not follow the pattern 5 syllables/7 syllables/5 syllables, as commonly believed, but rather the pattern 5 moras/7 moras/5 moras.
As one example, the Japanese syllable-final n is moraic, as is the first part of a geminate consonant. For example, the word Nippon (one of the pronunciations of 日本, the name for "Japan
" in Japanese) has four moras (ni-p-po-n); each of the four characters used in the hiragana
spelling にっぽん represents one of the four moras.
Thus, in Japanese, the words Tōkyō (to-u-kyo-u とうきょう), Ōsaka (o-o-sa-ka おおさか), and Nagasaki (na-ga-sa-ki ながさき) all have four moras, even though they have two, three, and four syllables, respectively.
is a trimoraic language. The typical foot in Gilbertese contains three moras. 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.”
constitutes one mora while a long vowel
constitutes two moras. A simple consonant
has no moras, and a doubled
or prenasalised consonant has one. No syllable
may contain more than three moras. The tone system in Ganda is based on moras.
, both syllables and moras 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 moras, 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.
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
that determines syllable weight
Syllable weight
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical poetry, both Greek and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line....
, which in some languages determines stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
or timing
Timing (linguistics)
Isochrony is the postulated rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language. Isochrony is one of the three aspects of prosody, the others being intonation and stress.Three alternative ways in which a language can divide time are postulated:...
. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D. McCawley
James D. McCawley
James David McCawley was an American linguist.McCawley was born James Quillan McCawley, Jr. to Dr. Monica Bateman McCawley , a physician and surgeon, and James Quillan McCawley , a businessman...
in 1968: a mora is “Something of which a long syllable consists of two and a short syllable consists of one.” The term comes from the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
word for “linger, delay”, which was also used to translate the Greek word chronos (time) in its metrical sense.
A 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...
containing one mora is said to be monomoraic; a syllable with two moras is said to be bimoraic. Also, in rarer cases, a syllable with three moras is said to be trimoraic.
Formation
In general, moras are formed as follows:- A syllable onset (the first consonantConsonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
or consonants of the syllable) does not represent any mora. - The syllable nucleus represents one mora in the case of a short vowel, and two moras in the case of a long vowel or diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
. Consonants serving as syllable nuclei also represent one mora if short and two if long. (SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
is an example of a language that has both long and short consonantal nuclei.) - In some languages (for example, JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
), the codaSyllable codaIn 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...
represents one mora, and in others (for example, IrishIrish languageIrish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
) it does not. In EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, the codas of stressed syllables represent a mora (thus, the word cat is bimoraic), but for unstressed syllables it is not clear whether the codas do so (the second syllable of the word rabbit might be monomoraic). - 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 (see plutiPlutiPluti is the term for overlong vowels in Sanskrit. Pluti vowels are usually noted with a numeral "3" , , also ....
).
In general, monomoraic syllables are said to be light syllables, bimoraic syllables are said to be heavy syllables, and trimoraic syllables (in languages that have them) are said to be superheavy syllables. Most linguists believe that no language uses syllables containing four or more moras.
Sanskrit
In India, the mora was an acknowledged phenomenon well over two millennia ago in ancient Indian linguistics schools studying the dominant scholarly and religious lingua franca of SanskritSanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
. The mora was first expressed in India as the mātrā.
For example, the short vowel "a" ' onMouseout='HidePop("2509")' href="/topics/Schwa">schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
) is assigned a value of one mātrā, the long vowel "ā" is assigned a value of two mātrās, and the complex vowel "ai" (which is composed of three simple short vowels, namely "a"+"a"+"i", or one long and one short vowel, namely "ā"+"i") is assigned a value of three mātrās.
Sanskrit prosody and metrics have a deep history of taking into account moraic weight, as it were, rather than straight syllables, divided into "laghu" (लघु, "light") and "guru" (गुरु, "heavy") feet based on how many moras can be isolated in each word.
Thus, for example, the word "kartṛi", meaning "agent" or "doer", does not contain, contrary to intuitive English prosodic principles, simply two syllabic units, but contains rather, in order, a "guru"/"heavy" foot and a "laghu"/"light" foot. The reason is that the conjoined consonants 'rt' render the normally light 'ka' 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...
heavy.
Ancient Greek
In Ancient GreekAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, short vowels have one mora, and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus long ē (eta
ETA
ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...
: η) can be understood as a sequence of two short vowels: ee.
Ancient Greek pitch accent is placed on only one mora in a word. An acute
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
(έ, ή) represents high pitch on the only mora of a short vowel or the last mora of a long vowel (é, eé). A circumflex
Circumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
(ῆ) represents high pitch on the first mora of a long vowel (ée).
Japanese
JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
is a language famous for its moraic qualities. Most dialects, including the standard, use moras (in Japanese, haku (拍) or mōra (モーラ)) rather than syllables as the basis of the sound system.
For example, haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
in modern Japanese do not follow the pattern 5 syllables/7 syllables/5 syllables, as commonly believed, but rather the pattern 5 moras/7 moras/5 moras.
As one example, the Japanese syllable-final n is moraic, as is the first part of a geminate consonant. For example, the word Nippon (one of the pronunciations of 日本, the name for "Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
" in Japanese) has four moras (ni-p-po-n); each of the four characters used in the hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
spelling にっぽん represents one of the four moras.
Thus, in Japanese, the words Tōkyō (to-u-kyo-u とうきょう), Ōsaka (o-o-sa-ka おおさか), and Nagasaki (na-ga-sa-ki ながさき) all have four moras, even though they have two, three, and four syllables, respectively.
Gilbertese
Gilbertese, an Austronesian language spoken mainly in KiribatiKiribati
Kiribati , officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The permanent population exceeds just over 100,000 , and is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres, straddling the...
is a trimoraic language. The typical foot in Gilbertese contains three moras. 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.”
Ganda
In Ganda, a short vowelVowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
constitutes one mora while a long vowel
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
constitutes two moras. A simple consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
has no moras, and a doubled
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
or prenasalised consonant has one. No 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...
may contain more than three moras. The tone system in Ganda is based on moras.
Hawaiian
In HawaiianHawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
, both syllables and moras 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
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
, such as oi, consists of two moras, 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.
See also
- Compensatory lengtheningCompensatory lengtheningCompensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda...
- DreimorengesetzDreimorengesetzDreimorengesetz is a German term which translates to "three-mora rule." This name is given to the rule for placing the accent in a Latin word.-Where the accent falls:...
- On (Japanese prosody)
- Pitch accentPitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
- SyllableSyllableA 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...