Outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy vs. first-last tone harmony in Cilungu (original) (raw)

Abstract

We present a case study of grammatical tone allomorphy in Cilungu (Bantu). Tense/Aspect/Mood designations (TAMs) are realized via co-exponence of prefixes, suffixes, and floating tones. In a minority of TAMs, there is allomorphy with the floating tones. For example, in the Recent Past one allomorph involves floating tone targeting the final mora of the stem ("Equation missing") versus one targeting the stem’s second mora ("Equation missing"2). For all such allomorphic TAMs, the alternation is conditioned by the tone of subject agreement markers (SMs) at the left edge of the word. If the SM is high-toned the "Equation missing" variant occurs, but if it is toneless then "Equation missing"2 occurs. We present two competing accounts of these data. Under a morphological account, we posit contextual realizational rules with multiple suppletive exponents conditioned by SM tone. In contrast, under a phonological account a ‘first-last tone harmony’ app...

Key takeaways

sparkles

AI

  1. Cilungu exhibits outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA), challenging conventional morphological theories.
  2. Grammatical tone allomorphy correlates with the tone of subject agreement markers (SMs) in specific tense/aspect/mood contexts.
  3. The Recent Past and Perfect TAMs show distinct grammatical tone patterns based on the SM's tonal properties.
  4. First-last tone harmony is proposed as a phonological operation, but its rarity undermines its viability as a phonological rule.
  5. The study contributes to morphological theory by suggesting simultaneous exponence, allowing for reciprocal allomorphy between SMs and TAMs.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (109)

  1. Anderson, S. (2008). Phonologically conditioned allomorphy in the morphology of Surmiran (Rumantsch). Word Structure, 1(2), 109-134.
  2. Anttila, A. (2002). Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations. Natural Language & Linguis- tic Theory, 20, 1-42.
  3. Arnott, D. W. (1970). The nominal and verbal system of Fula. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  4. Avcu, E., & Hestvik, A. (2020). Unlearnable phonotactics. Glossa, 5(1), 1-22.
  5. Baker, M. (1985). The mirror principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry, 16(3), 373-415.
  6. Bauer, L. (2016). Classical morphemics: Assumptions, extensions, and alternatives. In A. Hippisley & G. Stump (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of morphology (pp. 331-355). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  7. Belletti, A. (1990). Generalized verb movement: Aspects of verb syntax. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. Bermúdez-Otero, R. (2008). Stratal optimality theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  8. Bermúdez-Otero, R. (2012). The architecture of grammar and the division of labour in exponence. In J. Trommer (Ed.), The morphology and phonology of exponence (pp. 8-83). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  9. Bermúdez-Otero, R. (2018). In defense of underlying representations: Latin rhotacism, French liaison, Romanian palatalization. Probus, 30(2), 171-214.
  10. Bickmore, L. (2007). Cilungu phonology. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  11. Bickmore, L. (2014). Cilungu tone melodies: A descriptive and comparative study. Africana Linguistica, 20, 39-62.
  12. Bobaljik, J. D. (2000). The ins and outs of contextual allomorphy. University of Maryland working papers in linguistics, 10, 35-71.
  13. Bobaljik, J. D. (2012). Universals in comparative morphology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  14. Bonet, E., & Harbour, D. (2012). Contextual allomorphy. In J. Trommer (Ed.), The morphology and phonology of exponence (pp. 195-235). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  15. Buell, L. C. (2005). Issues in Zulu Verbal Morphosyntax. PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
  16. Bybee, J. L. (1985). Morphology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  17. Bye, P. (2007). Allomorphy-selection, not optimization. In S. Blaho, P. Bye, & M. Krämer (Eds.), Free- dom of Analysis (pp. 63-91). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
  18. Caha, P. (2009). The nanosyntax of case. PhD dissertation, University of Tromsø.
  19. Carstairs, A. (1987). Allomorphy in inflection. London: Croom Helm.
  20. Carstairs, A. (1990). Phonologically conditioned suppletion. In W. U. Dressler, H. C. Luschützky, O. E. Pfeiffer, & J. R. Rennison (Eds.), Contemporary morphology (pp. 17-23). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  21. Carstens, V. (2005). Agree and EPP in Bantu. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 23, 219-279.
  22. Chandlee, J. (2014). Strictly local phonological processes.
  23. Cheng, L., & Downing, L. J. (2012). Against FocusP: Arguments from Zulu. In I. Kučerová & A. Neele- man (Eds.), Contrasts and positions in Information Structure (pp. 247-266). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  24. Chomsky, N. (1956). Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2, 113-124.
  25. Chomsky, N. (1989). Notes on economy of derivation. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 53-82.
  26. Cinque, G. (2014). Again on tense, aspect, mood morpheme order and the 'mirror principle'. In P. Sveno- nius (Ed.), Functional structure from top to toe (pp. 232-265). Oxford: OUP.
  27. Corbett, G. G. (2007). Canonical typology, suppletion, and possible words. Language, 83(1), 8-42.
  28. Deal, A. R., & Wolf, M. (2017). Outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned allomorphy in Nez Perce. In V. Gribanova & S. S. Shih (Eds.), The morphosyntax-phonology connection (pp. 29-60). Oxford: OUP. Downing, L. J. (1999). Prosodic stem =/= prosodic word in Bantu. In T. A. Hall & U. Kleinhenz (Eds.), Studies on the phonological word (pp. 73-98). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  29. Dressler, W. (1985). Suppletion in word-formation. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical morphology (pp. 97-112). The Hague: Mouton.
  30. Embick, D. (2010). Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  31. Embick, D. (2015). The morpheme. Berlin/München/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  32. England, N. (1983). A grammar of Mam, a Mayan language. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  33. Finley, S. (2012). Learning unattested languages. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 34, pp. 1536-1541).
  34. Finley, S. (2017). Locality and harmony: Perspectives from artificial grammar learning. Language and Linguistics Compass, 11, e12233.
  35. Fromkin, V. A. (1978). Tone: A linguistic survey. New York: Academic Press.
  36. Graf, T. (2017). The power of locality domains in phonology. Phonology, 34, 385-405.
  37. Graf, T. (2018). Locality domains and phonological c-command over strings. In Proceedings of NELS 2017.
  38. Halle, M., & Marantz, A. (1993). Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In K. Hale & S. J. Keyser (Eds.), The view from building 20 (pp. 111-176). Cambridge: MIT Press.
  39. Hannahs, S. J., & Tallerman, M. (2006). At the interface: Selection of the Welsh definite article. Linguistics, 44(4), 781-816.
  40. Harford, C. (2008). The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphol- ogy.
  41. In C. De Cat & K. Demuth (Eds.), The Bantu-Romance connection (pp. 111-128). Amster- dam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  42. Haugen, J. D., & Siddiqi, D. (2016). Towards a restricted realization theory. In D. Siddiqi & H. Harley (Eds.), Morphological metatheory (pp. 343-386). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  43. Heinz, J. (2018). The computational nature of phonological generalizations. In L. M. Hyman & F. Plank (Eds.), Phonological typology: Phonetics and phonology (pp. 126-195). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  44. Heinz, J., & Idsardi, W. (2013). What complexity differences reveal about domains in language. Topics in Cognitive Science, 5(1), 111-131.
  45. Heinz, J., & Rogers, J. (2010). Estimating strictly piecewise distributions. In Proceedings of the 48th annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 886-896).
  46. Huttar, G. L. (1996). Epenthetic -mi in Ndyuka: A transitive marker? SIL Electronic Working Papers 1996- 003.
  47. Hyman, L. M. (2001). Privative tone in Bantu. In S. Kaji (Ed.), Cross-linguistic studies of tonal phenomena (pp. 237-257). Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures.
  48. Hyman, L. M. (2003). Suffix ordering in Bantu: A morphocentric approach. Yearbook of morphology, 2002, 245-281.
  49. Hyman, L. M. (2007). Universals of tone rules: 30 years later. In T. Riad & C. Gussenhoven (Eds.), Tones and tunes (pp. 1-34). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  50. Hyman, L. M. (2011). Tone: Is it different? In J. A. Goldsmith, J. Riggle, & A. C. L. Yu (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of phonological theory (pp. 197-238). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
  51. Hyman, L. M. (2012). Post-verbal subject in the Nzadi relative clause. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 33(1), 97-117.
  52. Hyman, L. M., & Schuh, R. G. (1974). Universals of tone rules: Evidence from West Africa. Linguistic Inquiry, 5(1), 81-115.
  53. Hyman, L. M., Sande, H., Lionnet, F., Rolle, N., & Clem, E. (2021). Prosodic systems: Niger-Congo and adjacent areas. In C. Gussenhoven & A. Chen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language prosody (pp. 183-194). Oxford: OUP.
  54. Inkelas, S. (1998). The theoretical status of morphologically conditioned phonology: A case study of dominance effects. In G. Booij & J. Van Marle (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1997 (pp. 121-155). Dordrecht: Springer.
  55. Inkelas, S. (2014). The interplay of morphology and phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  56. Jardine, A. (2016). Computationally, tone is different. Phonology, 33(2), 247-283.
  57. Jardine, A. (2020). Melody learning and long-distance phonotactics in tone. Natural Language & Linguis- tic Theory, 38, 1145-1195.
  58. Jones, P., & Freyer, J. (2019). Reconsidering tone and melodies in Kikamba. In E. Clem, P. Jenks, & H. Sande (Eds.), Theory and description in African linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th annual conference on African linguistics (pp. 177-198). Berlin: Language Science Press.
  59. Julien, M. (2002). Syntactic heads and word formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  60. Kaplan, R., & Kay, M. (1994). Regular models of phonological rule systems. Computational Linguistics, 20, 331-378.
  61. Kiparsky, P. (1982). Lexical morphology and phonology. In I.-S. Yang (Ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm (pp. 3-91). Seoul: Hanshin.
  62. Kiparsky, P. (1984). A compositional approach to Vedic word accent. In S. D. Joshi (Ed.), Amrtadhara: R. N. Dandekar felicitation volume (pp. 201-210). Delhi: Ajanta Publications.
  63. Kiparsky, P. (1996). Allomorphy or morphophonology? In R. Singh (Ed.), Trubetzkoy's Orphan: Pro- ceedings of the Montreal Roundtable 'Morphophonology: Contemporary Responses' (pp. 13-31). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  64. Kiparsky, P. (2021). Phonology to the rescue: Nez Perce morphology revisited. The Linguistic Review, 38(3), 391-442.
  65. Kiparsky, P., & Halle, M. (1977). Towards a reconstruction of the Indo-European accent. In L. M. Hyman (Ed.), Studies in stress and accent (pp. 209-238). Los Angeles: Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California.
  66. Lai, R. (2012). Domain specificity in learning phonology. PhD dissertation, University of Delaware.
  67. Lai, R. (2015). Learnable vs. unlearnable harmony patterns. Linguistic Inquiry, 46(3), 425-451.
  68. Meeussen, A. E. (1967). Bantu grammatical reconstructions. Africana Linguistica, 3, 79-121.
  69. Meeussen, A. E. (1971). Relative clauses in Bantu. Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement, 2, 3-10.
  70. Mel'čuk, I. A. (1994). Suppletion: toward a logical analysis of the concept. Studies in Language, 18(2), 339-410.
  71. Menn, L., & MacWhinney, B. (1984). The repeated morph constraint: Toward an explanation. Language, 60(3), 519-541.
  72. Merchant, J. (2015). How much context is enough? Two cases of span-conditioned stem allomorphy. Lin- guistic Inquiry, 46(2), 273-303.
  73. Myers, S. (1990). Tone and the structure of words in Shona. New York: Garland.
  74. Myler, N. (2017). Exceptions to the mirror principle and morphophonological 'action at a distance'. In H. Newell, M. Noonan, G. Piggot, & L. Travis (Eds.), The structure of words at the interfaces (pp. 100-125). Oxford: OUP.
  75. Nsuka Nkutsi, F. (1982). Les structures fondamentales du relatif dans les langues bantoues. Tervuren: Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale.
  76. Nurse, D. (1999). Towards a historical classification of East African Bantu languages. In J.-M. Hombert & L. M. Hyman (Eds.), Bantu historical linguistics (pp. 1-41). Stanford: CSLI Publications. Nurse, D. (2008). Tense and aspect in Bantu. Oxford: OUP.
  77. Nurse, D., & Philippson, G. (2006). Common tense-aspect markers in Bantu. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 27, 153-194.
  78. Odden, D. (1984). Stem tone assignment in Shona. In G. N. Clements & J. A. Goldsmith (Eds.), Autoseg- mental studies in Bantu tone (pp. 255-280). Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
  79. Odden, D. (2014). Melodic tones in Karanga Shona. Africana Linguistica, 20(1), 331-348.
  80. Odden, D., & Bickmore, L. (2014). Melodic tone in Bantu: Overview. Africana Linguistica, 20(1), 3-14.
  81. Paster, M. (2006). Phonological conditions on affixation. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berke- ley.
  82. Paster, M. (2009). Explaining phonological conditions on affixation: Evidence from suppletive allomorphy and affix ordering. Word Structure, 2(1), 18-37.
  83. Paster, M. (2014). Allomorphy. In R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of derivational morphology (pp. 219-234). Oxford: OUP.
  84. Paster, M. (2015). Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy: Cross-linguistic results and theoret- ical consequences. In E. Bonet, M.-R. Lloret, & J. Mascaró (Eds.), Understanding allomorphy (pp. 218-253). London: Equinox.
  85. Paster, M. (2016). Alternations: Stems and allomorphy. In A. Hippisley & G. T. Stump (Eds.), The Cam- bridge handbook of morphology (pp. 93-116). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  86. Pater, J. (2007). The Locus of exceptionality: Morpheme-specific phonology as constraint indexation. In L. Bateman, M. O'Keefe, E. Reilly, & A. Werle (Eds.), University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 32: Papers in Optimality Theory III (pp. 259-296). Amherst: GLSA.
  87. Pietraszko, A. (2018). Auxiliary vs INFL in Bantu. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 36(1), 265-308.
  88. Pike, K. L. (1948). Tone languages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  89. Prince, A., & Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. New York: Wiley.
  90. Riedel, K. (2009). The Syntax of object marking in Sambaa: A comparative Bantu perspective. PhD dis- sertation, Leiden University.
  91. Roberts-Kohno, R. (2000). Kikamba phonology and morphology. PhD dissertation, Ohio State University. Roberts-Kohno, R. (2014). Melodic tones in Kikamba. Africana Linguistica, 20(1), 368-384.
  92. Rose, S., & Walker, R. (2004). A typology of consonant agreement as correspondence. Language, 80(3), 475-531.
  93. Schadeberg, T. C. (1989). Tone and history of Nyamwezi verb forms with complex final tones. Afrika und Übersee, Band, 72(1), 33-42.
  94. Shih, S. S., & Inkelas, S. (2018). Autosegmental aims in surface-optimizing phonology. Linguistic Inquiry, 50(1), 137-196.
  95. Smith, P. W., Moskal, B., Xu, T., Kang, J., & Bobaljik, J. D. (2019). Case and number suppletion in pronouns. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 37(3), 1029-1101.
  96. Speas, P. (1991). Functional heads and the mirror principle. Lingua, 84(2-3), 181-214.
  97. Starke, M. (2009). Nanosyntax: A short primer on a new approach to language. Nordlyd, 36(1), 1-6.
  98. Stump, G. T. (2001). Inflectional morphology: A theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  99. Svenonius, P. (2012). Look both ways: Outward-looking allomorphy in Icelandic participles. Ms., Univer- sity of Tromsø, LingBuzz/001519.
  100. Svenonius, P. (2016). Spans and words. In D. Siddiqi & H. Harley (Eds.), Morphological metatheory (pp. 201-222). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  101. Trommer, J. (2012). The morphology and phonology of exponence. Oxford: OUP.
  102. van der Wal, J. (2008). Agreement in thetic sentences in Bantu and Romance. In C. De Cat & K. Demuth (Eds.), The Bantu-Romance connection (pp. 323-350). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  103. van der Wal, J. (2009). Word order and information structure in Makhuwa-Enahara. PhD dissertation, Leiden University.
  104. Veselinova, L. (2006). Suppletion in verb paradigms. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  105. Wee, L.-H. (2019). Phonological tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  106. Willard, E. R. (2004). Dominance effects in a dialect of Mam Maya. Presentation at the Annual meeting. the Linguistic Society of America, Boston, 9 January, 2004.
  107. Wolf, M. (2008). Optimal interleaving: Serial phonology-morphology interaction in a constraint-based model. PhD Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
  108. Wolf, M. (2013). Candidate chains, unfaithful spell-out, and outwards-looking phonologically-conditioned allomorphy. Morphology, 23(2), 145-178.
  109. Yip, M. (2002). Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

FAQs

sparkles

AI

What are the key findings regarding grammatical tone allomorphy in Cilungu?add

The study reveals that grammatical tone allomorphy in Cilungu is conditioned by the tone of subject markers, resulting in distinct tonal patterns in specific tense/aspect/mood (TAM) designations.

How does first-last tone harmony operate in Cilungu's grammar?add

The analysis highlights a phonological phenomenon where the tone of the subject marker dictates the tone of the final mora in the stem, a pattern termed 'first-last tone harmony', influencing grammatical outcomes.

What types of TAM designations show grammatical tone alternations?add

Only a subset of TAM designations exhibit grammatical tone alternations, notably those involving specific tense and aspect features, while most are invariant or lack tonal variation.

What distinguishes the morphological account of allomorphy from phonological accounts?add

The paper argues for a morphological account with suppletive allomorphy, challenging phonological models that attempt to explain patterns without suppletive structures, emphasizing the rarity of first-last tone harmony.

What implications does the study have for morphological theory?add

The findings suggest that outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) is achievable, contradicting previous claims of its unattainability, thus advocating for simultaneous exponence in morphological frameworks.