Introduction

In this chapter devoted to word-final empty nuclei, I argue in favour of the principle of ‘Coda’ Licensing proposed by Kaye (1990c), according to which a consonant occurs within a rhyme if it is licensed by an adjacent segment in the onset position. It follows from this principle that every word or more precisely every domain contains a final nucleus in its representation. While in some languages a final nucleus may be underlyingly empty (e.g. French, English, Portuguese etc.), in some other languages it may not (e.g. Dessano, Dida etc.). The ‘Coda’ Licensing Principle is universal. But in those languages where a word-final nucleus may be underlyingly empty, subject to parametric variation, those word-final empty nuclei may or may not be manifested as null. From this parametric choice, languages like Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Japanese are distinguished from others like English and French. While in French and English a word-final nucleus can be empty and realized as zero, this is not the case in languages of the type of Japanese and BP, where words always end with a vowel. That is, while word-final empty nuclei are licensed in French and English they are not licensed in languages of the type of Japanese. In addition, in languages in which word-final empty nuclei are licensed, there is variation as to whether the empty nucleus may be manifested as null after a consonant cluster.