Typology of the Minimal Word

This paper presents the typology of the minimal word. It first gives the definition of the minimal word as minimal prosodic restrictions on the size of the well- formed words in language. It then categorizes languages depending on the grammatical categories concerned with the minimal word. Some languages requires their whole lexicon to have the minimal size, others require the minimality only for content words, and still others have to have the minimal size in their limited sets of lexicon. The paper then divides the minimality into two major satisfaction types: passive vs. active. The passive satisfaction types normally blocks the application of deletion or truncation of segments if the output would be smaller than the required size in the language. The active satisfaction types expand a form under the minimal size by adding some elements to it. This paper further investigates the effects of the minimal word in language and the possibility of application of the recent constraint theory. It finally mentions the perspectives of the minimal word by viewing dialectal variations in a language.