ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a set of parameters which would lead to a universal inventory of syllable types, as well as to implicational relations that might hold between them. It argues that, in addition to having sonority constraints on syllables, people also need to constrain the sonority of moras. The chapter also argues that Lithuanian should be analyzed as having moraic sonorants and nonmoraic obstruents. It focuses on two lexical processes whose effect can roughly be characterized as mora addition — Ablaut and Nasal Infixation. The chapter shows that the two premises that serve as basis for the typology contribute to a number of valid predictions about subsyllabic structure. It discusses types of closed syllables and heavy syllables. The branchingness is read either off the 'rhyme projection' of the syllable, making both CVV and CVC heavy; or off the nuclear or projection, making only CVV syllables heavy.
