Syllable weight in Amharic

Here we propose that in Amharic, a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia, geminate codas, but not other consonants, contribute to syllable weight, supporting the typology of coda-consonant syllable weight systems predicted by Hayes (1989)’s Moraic Theory. Based on data collected through eight months of elicitation-based fieldwork, we demonstrate that two independent processes of the language, stress and reduplication, serve as evidence that in Amharic geminate codas, but not other codas, are moraic.