The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals: Studies on African Languages Offered to John M. Stewart on his 60th Birthday [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9783110866292, 9783110131093

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The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals

Publications in African Languages and Linguistics The aim of this series is to offer, at regular intervals, carefully worked out studies or collections of papers in African linguistics. In this way, it is hoped that important work can be brought to the attention of a wider linguistic audience including scholars who are not primarily concerned with African linguistics but who wish to keep abreast of recent advances in the fields of historical linguistics, theoretical phonology and linguistic typology, all of which, incidentally, tend to rely rather heavily on African language data. At the same time, the editors intend to include occasional volumes which offer general accounts of major language groups, hoping that such surveys will be of assistance not only to linguists working on African languages but also to those who specialize in other areas. Throughout the series an attempt will be made to strike a healthy balance between theory oriented and data oriented research. Editors: George N. Clements Didier L. Goyvaerts

Advisory board: John Goldsmith (Bloomington, Indiana) Claire Grégoire (Tervuren) Frank Heny (Middlebury, Vermont) Larry M. Hyman (Los Angeles, California) William R. Leben (Stanford, California) Thilo C. Schadeberg (Leiden)

Publications in African Languages and Linguistics Other books in this series: 1. Ivan R. Dihoff (ed.) Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 1) 2. Gerrit J. Dimmendaal The Turkana Language 3. G.N. Clements and J. Goldsmith (eds.) Autosegmentai Studies in Bantu Tone 5. Jonathan Kaye, Hilda Koopman, Dominique Sportiche and André Dugas (eds.) Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 2)

Koen Bogers, Harry van der Hülst and Maarten Mous (eds.)

The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals Studies on African Languages Offered to John M. Stewart on his 60th Birthday

1986 FORIS PUBLICATIONS Dordrecht - Holland/Cinnaminson - U.S.A.

Published by: Foris Publications Holland P.O. Box 509 3300 AM Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sole distributor for the U.S.A. and Canada: Foris Publications U.S.A. P.O. Box C-50 Cinnaminson N.J. 08077 U.S.A.

photo by Veronique Deenen ISBN 90 6765 157 5 (Bound) ISBN 90 6765 158 3 (Paper) © 1986 Foris Publications - Dordrecht No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands by ICG Printing, Dordrecht.

Preface and Acknowledgements

The name of John Stewart is familiar to all workers in the field of African linguistics, as well as to phonologists working in other language areas. His descriptive, comparative and theoretical researches have all led to valuable discoveries of which the importance can hardly be overestimated. During his stay at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, from 1951 to 1961, first as a postgraduate student and from 1954 as a lecturer, Stewart's interests were concentrated mainly on the structure of Akan (Twi-Fante) and on the comparative and historical study of Akan and the languages related to it. This led to a continuing interest in the sound correspondences between Akan and Bantu, which has contributed a great deal to our knowledge of the earlier stages of the Niger-Congo family. From 1961 to 1973 he was attached to the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. This Enabled him to carry out intensive fieldwork on languages spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast. The results of his fruitful work in those areas were reported, in that same period alone, in at least two dozen articles, papers and lectures, which were widely recognized as major contributions both to African linguistics and to general linguistic theory. Stewart's study of Akan was motivated not only by a purely linguistic interest, but also by a desire to help to improve the quality of the teaching of Akan in schools and in particular to contribute to the further development of its written form. This led him to give priority to the study of the phonology of the language. He viewed his historical-comparative research as being of considerable importance for the study of African history because of the extreme diversity of the languages between the Sahara and the West African coast and the paucity of older written records in most of the area. Phonologists concerned with general linguistic theory know Stewart's work primarily through its contribution to the understanding and formal analysis of vowel harmony and tone. He was one of the first to recognize the crucial importance of the tongue root position as the essential feature distinguishing the harmonic grades in many West African languages. The feature [advanced tongue root] has since then been widely accepted in the phonological literat-

ure. He has also made important contributions to our understanding of African tone systems, in particular to the analysis of Downstep in terraced level tone languages. Stewart has followed theoretical proposals in the area of phonological analysis with great attention, and has contributed much to their development through his own work as well as through his positive and fair criticism of the work of others. To John Stewart, the distinction between theoretical and descriptive work means little. He combines both activities harmoniously, thus producing results which are of interest to any linguist. As a person John is completely unpretentious, and it is a pleasure to work with him. Gifted with a high degree of that very Scottish quality, "canniness", he is always willing to lend an ear to people with any kind of linguistic problem, and one can be sure that an opinion he is prepared to express is worth listening to. Anyone engaged in a discussion with him experiences his appreciation of valid arguments, and his sharp and constructive criticism of arguments which, on closer examination, are indeed less convincing. With this collection of articles we wish to congratulate John Stewart on his 60th birthday. We sincerely hope that he will continue to share the fruits of his linguistic work with us. He has retired from his chair in the Department of African linguistics, University of Leiden, which he occupied from 1975 to 1985, but we are convinced that it is much too early for him to retire from linguistics. The articles in this volume are not only intended to stimulate him in his further work, but also, and primarily, to express our deep appreciation for John Stewart as a linguist and as a person. The articles which follow all deal with issues in phonology, and in particular suprasegmental phenomena, and all but one are concerned mainly or exclusively with African languages. As John Stewart is not only interested in African languages (after all he started his linguistic career with French), and has a special interest in the languages spoken in his native country, it is appropriate that one of the contributions deals with Scots Gaelic. Finally, we wish to thank the authors for their willingness to contribute to this volume, Ella van der Hulst and Francine Swets for their careful typing and John van Lit, Frans van Putten and Ton van der Wouden for assistence in proofreading.

The Editors

Table of Contents

Tone Gerrit J. Dimmendaal & Anneke Breedveld Tonal Influence on Vocalic Quality

1

F. Dolphyne Tone and Grammar in Akan. The tone of Possessive Constructions in the Asante Dialect

35

Ben Ohi Elugbe The Analysis of Falling Tones in Ghotug

51

Firmin Ahoua The Autosegmental Representation of Tones in Akan: More Evidence for the Tone Mapping Rule with Reference to Baule

63

Kevin C. Ford The Tonal Phonology of Siya (a Central-Togo Language) and the Historical Significance of its Major Functions

79

John Goldsmith Tone in the CiRuri Present Continuous

95

Larry M. Hyman The Representation of Multiple Tone Heights

109

M.E. Kropp Dakubu Downglide, Floating Tones and Non-WH Questions in Ga and Dangme

153

Paul Newman Contour Tones as Phonemic Primes in Grebo

175

Kay Williamson The Igbo Associative and Specific Constructions

195

Vowel Harmony T.L. Cook The Chameleonic Vowel in the Harmonizing Prefixes of Efik

209

Harry van der Hülst & Norval Smith On Neutral Vowels

233

Maarten Mous Vowel Harmony in Tunen

Segment Structure

281

Rules

Julianna Kuperus The Evaluation of Segment Structure Conditions through the Explicit Statement of their Logical Implications

297

Thilo C. Schadeberg A Note on Segment Inventories, Redundancy Conditions and A-Rules

307

Miscellaneous G.N. Clements Syllabification and Epenthesis in the Barra Dialect of Gaelic

317

Alan S. Duthie Phonetic Features

337

Jean-Marie Hombert The Development of Nasalized Vowels in the Teke Language Group (Bantu)

359

Tonal Influence on Vocalic Quality Gerrit J. Dimmendaal & Anneke Breedveld Department of African Linguistics, University of Leiden

1. Introduction * It is a well-known fact that consonants and vowels can influence tonal realizations. A voiceless oral obstruent may produce a higher variant of a tone on the following vowel than a voiced one, or, alternatively, a voiced obstruent may produce a lower variant of a tone on a following vowel (Hombert 1978:78-102). Such influences may result in the development of incipient or fully operating tone systems (tonogenesis) from non-tonal languages, because (originally) redundant tonal distinctions inherent to certain consonants become contrastive, as in many South-East Asian languages. Alternatively, consequences for the tonal registers and contours may arise in languages that have fully operating systems. Toweett (1979:64-5) has observed that in the Southern Nilotic language Kipsikiis disyllabic verb roots ending in a sonorant call for a final highfalling tone, whereas other final consonants call for a final high tone. Hieda (1982) has claimed that high tones on a final syllable ending in a sonorant became falling in the historical development of Southern Nilotic when a preceding syllable contained a high tone. Influence exerted by vowels on tone is not a widely attested process (Hombert 1978=96-102). with regard to the inverse, tonal influence on vowels (as well as consonants) Schuh (1978:224) has claimed that "tone rarely, if ever, influences segments", and further (p. 225), "virtually no clear cases of tonal influence on segments have been found.". Hombert (1978:95-6) summarizes some of the few reported cases of laryngealization, breathiness and glottal stop insertion in a number of languages under the influence of specific tones. Kaye and Charette (1981) report on Dida, an eastern Kru language spoken in the Ivory Coast. In Dida, tone influences certain rules of segmental phonology; the stem-vowel truncation rule in verbal conjugation is conditioned by tone according to the authors. The present paper sets out to describe what seems to be a clear case of tonal influence on vocalic quality in Turkana, an Eastern Nilotic language of northwestern Kenya. In Turkana long vowels before pause remain long and voiced,

2

Gerrit

mâmé n

—

>

—

>

—

>

— = > de Inf buy elephant (past)

TnT TnT

'elephant' 'elephant'

ämokä omokä

'orange' 'orange'

5 d TnT 'he bought an elephant'

d. 5

de

ärrökä

—>

3

d5!moka

'he bought an orange'

e. 3

de

ömökä

—>

3

do!m5ki

'he bought an orange'

54

Ben Ohi Elugbe

We see in (6e) that the L on the first syllable of 5m5ka spreads on to the H, yielding omoka. A DS is then inserted after the L (on account of the preceding H). Thus the stretch -moka is in fact downstepped so that the rise is lower than it would normally be. (6b(i)) and (6d) clearly demonstrate that L does not spread to M. This is not unusual: in Yoruba, a preceding L spreads to H but not to M. Also, it is often claimed that -M occurs in Yoruba but -H does not.®

2.

Falling tones in Ghotu