in monosyllabic words as well as in word-final position. The syllabic /l/, on the other hand, is rare and unattested in word-initial position. As a consonant the central resonant /r/, as opposed to /l/, however, is not found in word- initial position and changes to a retroflex flap intervocalically. Whenever /r/ occurs in word-initial position, it is in words clearly borrowed words from Arabic and other languages. The allophonic flap and /l/ are easily confused but the flap can also be found immediately following a consonant (and preceding a vowel), a position where /l/ is absent, one of the rare cases where a sequence of consonants can be found. The lateral liquid is found in word-initial, intervocalic and word-final position and is slightly palatalized. This palatalization leads to a slightly fricated voiceless palatal release with some speakers when it is in word-final position. The fricatives /s/ and /f/ are usually voiceless but, in some instances, vary with their voiced counterparts. They occur word initially and intervocalically, but only loanwords possess the fricatives in word-final position. The /s/ is sometimes palatalized (realized as [ʃ]) before the high front vowel /i/. Tone and Stress Afitti is a tone language with stress. Tonal minimal pairs are attested for monosyllabic, bisyllabic, and trisyllabic words. In longer, however, words stress seems to play a more important role. The stressed syllable is marked by a combination of volume, duration and change in tone, rather than just tone alone. Afitti has only two phonemic tones with clear and strong downdrift, with no third tone or even downstep. The shortening of syllables ending in /r/ has led to many words that have an intervocalic flap following a schwa or a syllabic /r/. The schwa is omitted altogether by some speakers reducing the word by one syllable and possibly eliminating a tone. When this reduction occurs, one tone is assimilated to the neighboring tone, keeping the tonal pattern intact. Syllable Structure Afitti has both closed and open syllables. Syllables may be closed with a liquid, a nasal or a stop. Single-segment syllables may consist of a (syllabic) liquid, a (syllabic) nasal, or a vowel. Syllables include combinations of vowel and consonant but there are few consonant clusters. Nasals that precede consonants are always syllabic – there are no nasal-consonant sequences or prenasalized segments. Liquids that follow fricatives or consonants are preceded by a schwa for most speakers, but in