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How many possible words are there in Mawu?

Keeping in mind the number of consonants and vowels, the set of possible syllable structures, the distribution of final nasal elements, and the tonal system, how many monosyllabic words could there be in Mawu? How many two-syllable words? How many words of three syllables?

Assume that 17 initial consonant-glide sequences are possible, and that there are no other constraints on feature co-occurrences beyond those mentioned in this paper.



Mark Liberman
Fri Oct 3 14:10:16 EDT 1997