Coda Lidencing

The first question about this topic would be: Why would a word-final consonant have to be syllabified in an onset, and not in a normal post-nuclear rhymal complement (Coda) position. After all, we have this position in word internally, and this Coda is so important as it differs some languages to others called "CV languages".

First of all, Coda is an old term, back to the time that all consonants which occur after a nucleus could be simply attached to the rhyme in the form:

(1)

,where C could even accommodate 2 consonants when N is neither a long vowel nor a heavy diphthong. Nowadays, Coda is more accurately called rhymal complement, to accentuate the fact that it is not a constituent, while onset and nuclear are.

Why can't a word end in a consonant?

If we observe the way languages behave, so many exceptions seem to occur in the word-final "Coda", every rules about how it should normally behaves is so frequently broken that leads us to the question whether this "Coda" could be defined as such.

1- The case of vowel shortening rule.

Basically, long vowels are shortened in a closed syllable (Kaye). And here are some examples to illustrate this proposition.

Ex: French, chat [Sa:] and chatte [Sat]