Prosodic minimality in isolation and in context

Prosodic minimality refers to the minimum size requirements that languages impose on prosodic words. To date, nearly all research on prosodic minimality considers the prosodic word in isolation. This chapter summarizes this literature but focuses rather on the phonological analysis of minima in the context of larger prosodic constituents, a domain that reveals new issues. In particular, resyllabification across words can threaten minima (as when CVC words resyllabify), to which languages can respond either by suppressing resyllabification if it threatens minimality, by allowing resyllabification but repairing the word through lengthening, or by letting the resulting degenerate word stand as such. Case studies of Prakrit, Tamil, and Latin illustrate these three possibilities, respectively. Tamil is of further interest because only a subset of its coda consonants contribute to minimality. Evidence converges from across systems that its two rhotics fail to bear weight, despite being highly sonorous coda consonants.