The grammar of syllables: patterns of acceptability

Patterns of permissibility vary in terms of filling these constituents of the syllable. In some languages, like Arabic, every syllable must have an onset; if a word without an onset in one syllable is borrowed from another language, for instance, a glottal stop [ʔ] will be inserted to meet that requirement. Conversely, in Hawaiian, no codas are allowed, so that coda consonants in loanwords will be deleted, or have an extra, following vowel introduced, so the consonant becomes an onset and therefore legal. However, there do not seem to be any languages which either insist on codas, or rule out onsets. The universal, basic syllable type is therefore CV: all known languages allow this, whether they have other, more complex syllable types in addition, or not.