The Tonal Phonology and Phonetics of the Future Negative in Loka"a"∗ ∗ ∗ (original) (raw)
Two Lectures on Prosodic Morphology
1994
This document contains handouts and transcripts (prepared from a contemporaneous tape recording) of two lectures presented at the OTS/HIL Workshop on Prosodic Morphology, held at the University of Utrecht, June 22-24, 1994. We are grateful to the participants in the Workshop and to the organizers, René Kager, Harry van der Hulst, and Wim Zonneveld. The article "Reduplicative Identity" is an exploration of some of the points raised in the second lecture.
Leteh verbal morphology and inflectional affixes
MERCY AKROFI ANSAH, 2022
The paper describes how verb stems in Lɛtɛ 1 , (Kwa: Ghana) inflect for grammatical categories of tense/aspect, person, negation, mood and motion by employing prefixes. Studies of this nature have been documented with respect to related Kwa languages (Ameka & Kropp-Dakubu, 2008), but no such study has been published on Lɛtɛ, an under-documented language, hence the significance of this paper. Verbal prefixes which are employed to mark the categories include the future morpheme, /bÈ-/; the progressive marker, /dÉ-/; the perfect aspect prefix, /yÈÉ-/; and for negation, the prefix/ bÉ-/. Similarly, other verbal prefixes are used to signal person, mood and motion. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates the influence of the [+/-ATR] vowel harmony principles; homorganic assimilation, and the phonological structure of the verb stem on the surface representation of the prefixes. Data for the study are drawn from a database of Lɛtɛ verb lists and folktales recorded in the speech community by the author, and supplemented with elicitations. The paper adds novel data to the existing literature on the function of verbal affixes in marking inflectional categories in Kwa languages in particular, and the world's languages in general.
English Phonology and Morphology
The Handbook of English Linguistics, 2020
We ilustrate the complexity and interest of English phonology and morphology through two case studies: the phonological and morphological behavior of sibilant suffixes, and the aspiration of voiceless obstruents. We focus on documenting individual variation in these areas and examining theoretical proposals that have been advanced to account for the attested range of variation that is found, highlighting cases where the data connect to larger issues in phonological and morphological theory.
Lhowa phonology: A typological perspective
Lhowa, an undescribed Central Bodish language spoken in Nepal, exhibits a large inventory of phonemes. It has forty-one consonant phonemes. In terms of points/places of articulation, it contains seven types of consonants, viz., labial, dental, alveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar and glottal. Likewise, in terms of manner of articulation, it presents seven types of consonants, viz., stops, nasals, affricates, fricatives, trills, laterals and approximants. In terms of voicing, there are two types of consonant phonemes, viz., voiceless and voiced whereas in terms of aspiration there are two types of consonants, viz., aspirated and unaspirated. It also contains lateral and retroflex fricatives. Lhowa contains voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced murmured and voiceless murmured. It exhibits distinct consonant distribution and clusters. Lhowa has eight primary and two secondary vowel phonemes (viz., front rounded vowels). The primary vowel phonemes present oppositions in terms of height, front-back positions and breathiness. It lacks the contrastive length. Breathy vowels can occur only word-finally. Lhowa may be classified as average in terms of consonant-vowel ratio. There are four diphthongs in Lhowa. It displays a moderately complex syllable structure. It presents a canonical structure of the syllable in which V (i.e., nucleus) is obligatory and other constituents, (C i , initial consonant), (X, voiced palatal approximant), and (C f , final consonant) are optional. Lhowa admits only six types of syllable patterns. In Lhowa, each syllable is intrinsically high or low. It exhibits a simple tone system. The high vs. low tone is distinguished only on the first syllable of a word. In Lhowa, like in Lhasa Tibetan, compound words and certain derived and inflected verb forms demonstrate four types of tone melodies, viz., HH (high followed by high), LH (low followed by high), LL (low followed by low) and HL (high tone followed by low). Stress is not distinctive whereas intonation is meaning differentiating in Lhowa.
1996
Abstract This work has circulated in manuscript form since October, 1986. Its basic contents were first presented at WCCFL 3 in spring, 1986 to an audience that was not devoid of convinced believers in the C and the V. It has been cited variously as McCarthy & Prince 1986, M&P forthcoming, and even (optimistically) M&P in press.
This paper analyses a non-exhaustive list of pairs of Proto-Indo- European roots of equal or close meaning that differ by alternations between voiceless stop and voiced aspirated stop at the same place of articulation, as well as between *l and *n – or, in some cases, both. The compared roots may occasionally also differ with respect to grades of apophony (e, o or zero) and the presence or absence of extensions. It presents the hypothesis that such alternations can be due to diatopic and/or diachronic variations that were included in the same reconstructed model of Proto-Indo-European, or else had some grammatical role, possibly of aspect. Possible explanations of the phenomenon are that laryngeal consonants adjacent to voiceless stops may turn them into voiceless aspirates and subsequently voiced aspirates, or that the very phonetic nature of these consonants may be different from what is currently accepted. The aim of this work is not exactly theorising on the subject, as more data need to be collected for this, but raising the interest of Indo-Europeanists in looking into the issue in order to seek more empirical evidence (and, possibly, exclude the possibility that such a phenomenon is the product of mere coincidence or has a trivial explanation) and perhaps outline some theory about it.