Abstract
Bondu So (Dogon, Mali) displays [ATR] vowel harmony that interacts with rootfinal consonants. This study provides evidence from five verb paradigms to show that the quality of a stem suffix, and its absence or presence, is determined by a combination of factors including [ATR], sonorancy, and prosody. Preliminary phonetic results show that, on average, root-final sonorants following [+ATR] vowels are longer than those following [-ATR] vowels. This differs from what is reported for other languages, as these consonants are neither inherently moraic, nor do they receive a mora due to their position alone. This finding suggests that, in Bondu So, [+ATR] licenses sonorant moraicity. We argue that these instances of coerced moraicity explain otherwise unexpected patterns of suffixation among these verb paradigms.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | The Ghanaian Linguistics Nexus |
Publisher | Language Science Press |
Pages | 213-241 |
Number of pages | 29 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783961104697 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783985540983 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 25 2023 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities
- General Social Sciences