Morphophonology of Joola Eegimaa A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Mamadou Bassene IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHYLOSOPHY Advisers: Anna Lubowicz Jeanette K. Gundel August 2012 © Mamadou Bassene 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Acknowledgements There is an Eegimaa proverb which goes: “no matter how deep a river is, it has a bottom.” The wisdom behind this proverb is that everything has an end and with a persistent belief on yourself and an unshakable determination, you can always overcome the difficulties ahead of you and fulfil your dreams. The road to completion of this research has been not only long, but also thorny. At times, I even considered quitting and going back home to be among the people I love and care so much and who, in their hearts, have even more love and care to offer. However, my conscience spoke much louder than my despair and its message was crystal clear: ‘you gave up everything you had in Senegal and came to this great country for a PhD degree. No matter the nature of the obstacles standing in your way, you cannot give up. You would be failing not just yourself, but also so many people who set so much hope and expectation on you. You have to complete your PhD. You can do it and you have to do it. You owe it to yourself and to your beloved people, especially your sister Miho Patani’. I am glad I listened to my conscience. It was a true blessing having Professors Jeanette K. Gundel and Anna Lubowicz as my advisers. I was introduced to Anna Lubowicz at a time when my prospect of ever starting this dissertation cannot be any bleaker. I was desperately looking for a phonologist to supervise my research and Professor Gundel who made my case her own, introduced me to Anna Lubowicz. That was when my academic career took a turn for the better and I will, forever, be indebted to both of them. i I am also grateful to Daniel Karvonen for his comments and advise when I was working on my MA thesis and for accepting to join my dissertation committee. Thanks are also due and are hereby rendered to Professor Benjamin Munson and Professor Mark Snyder, the other two members of the committee. The comments I received from this committee during my preliminary oral examination were very fruitful and gave me new and clear ideas on how to proceed in the research. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my department, the Institute of linguistics, the National Science Foundation, the office of International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) and to Professor Polly E. Szatrowski for their financial support. The cooperative known as the Minnesota Graduate Club will always have a special place in my heart for providing international graduate students with affordable accommodation. It is impossible to list all the Eegimaa speakers with whom I worked, collecting the data upon which this dissertation has drawn and I would like to apologize in advance for the omissions. However, there are some informants I just cannot afford to omit because they have invested such a tremendous amount of time and energy in this research that they should be publically acknowledged. These are: Louis Eketuba Bassene, Rene Bassene, Aput Bassene, Ousmane A. Bassene, Noel Bassene, Maxim Manga, Kembugun Manga, Moni Sambou, Binta Sambou, and Marie Tendeng. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my instructors at Gaston Berger University in Senegal, especially to Ibrahima Ndiaye, Abdoulaye Barry and Maweja ii Mbaya for introducing me to the Linguistics discipline. My relatives have always been there for me, in all my endeavors. I am appreciative of their support, love and prayers. May the blessings of God rest upon all of you! iii Dedication To the memory of my father, Abdou Karim Bassene and my mother Aïssatou Bassene. To my brothers and sisters, my aunt Binta Bassene, my friend Ephrem Gutemberg Manga, and especially, to my sister Miho Patani. iv Abstract This dissertation explores the morphophonology of Joola Eegimaa (Eegimaa hereafter), an endangered West Atlantic language spoken in the southern region of Senegal. Previous researches on this language focus on the morphosyntax (Bassene 2007 and Tendeng 2007) and the semantics, specifically the semantic motivation of Eegimaa noun class system (Sagna 2008). This study is the first work devoted to the morphophonology of Eegimaa and therefore contributes significantly to the documentation of this language. This study provides a detailed description of Eegimaa morphology and phonology, and presents three case studies of such processes as reduplication, nasal assimilation and vowel harmony which are all very common in this language. The morphological analysis proposed in this study offers a detailed account of Eegimaa nominal classification and concord system as well as the rules for word formation in this language. This dissertation also provides valuable information regarding the Eegimaa phoneme inventory, the various processes affecting phonemes, and offers significant insights into the syllable structure of Eegimaa. The results of the experimental studies I conducted have revealed that vowel length is not a phonological feature in Eegimaa and that vowel sequences are always parsed into nuclei of separate syllables. I also argue, based on the results of the experiments and the behavior of ‘prenasalized’ consonants and geminates that in Eegimaa, these sounds should also be treated as a sequence of two segments instead of one. v Eegimaa reduplication is very complex and shows a dual behavior of consonants in the reduplicant coda. Voiceless singleton consonants and glides are deleted when they occur in the reduplicant coda whereas voiced consonants and liquids completely assimilate to the onset of the base. I attribute this dual behavior of consonants to a difference in moraicity, with voiceless singleton consonants and glides being nonmoraic and voiced singleton consonants and liquids being moraic; a claim supported by the acoustic study I conducted. Eegimaa nasal consonants also exhibit a dual behavior. When a nasal is followed by a voiced obstruent, it assimilates to the place of articulation of the obstruent. However, when a nasal is followed by a voiceless obstruent or an approximant, complete nasal assimilation occurs. I strongly argue that the two types of nasal assimilation processes are attributable to the Nasal-Consonant (NC) requirements in this language. Indeed, Eegimaa only allows NC sequences consisting of a nasal and a homorganic voiced obstruent and therefore, whenever a nasal is followed by a voiced obstruent, it assimilates to the place of the obstruent and when the nasal is followed by a voiceless obstruent or an approximant, complete assimilation occurs since the sequences nasal-voiceless obstruent ( ) and nasal-approximant ( ) are not allowed. NC̥ NC̞ The analysis of Eegimaa morphophonological processes is undertaken within the framework of Optimality Theory. However, it should be pointed out that the data upon which this dissertation draws do not favor any specific type of analysis. vi Therefore, throughout this dissertation, I adopt an approach which combines both descriptive and theoretical analyses and in many cases, these analyses are supplemented by experimental studies. vii Contents Acknowledgements.……………………………………………………………………………………i Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Abstract ..………………………………………………………………………………………………….v List of tables.…………………………………………………………………………………………..xvi List of figures………………………………………………………………………………………….xix List of abbreviations………………………………………………………………………………...xx List of symbols……………………………………………………………………………………...xxiv 0. Introduction…….……………………………………………………………...............………………..1 0.1 Motivation.…………………………………………………………………...............……………..1 0.2 Objective…………………………………………………………………………...............………..2 0.3 Data and data collection……………………………...............……………………………….3 0.4 Contribution…………………………………………………...............…………………………..4 0.5 An outline of the chapters……………………...............…………………………………….6 1. Social and linguistic overview……………………...............……………………………………9 1.1 The people……………………………………………………...............…………………………..9 1.2 Origin of Eegimaa people…………………………………...............………………………10 1.3 Social life……………………………………...............…………………………………………...12 1.4 Religion………………………………………...............……………………………………….....14 1.5 The resistance to French imperialism………...……………………………................15 viii 1.6 Classification of the language…………………………………..………………...............18 1.7 Previous studies of Eegimaa…………………………………………………...................19 1.8 Typological information……………………………………………………........................20 1.9 Sociolinguistic background…………………………………………………......................23 2. Morphology……………...………………………………………………………………….................27 2.0 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...............27 2.1 Class markers……………………………………………………………………................27 2.1.1 Methodology…………………………………………………………..................28 2.1.1.1 Semantic approach………………………………………................28 2.1.1.2 Morphosyntactic approach……………………………...............34 2.1.2. Discussion……………………………………………………………......................41 2.1.2.1 Human class markers……………………………………...............41 2.1.2.2 Nonhuman class markers………………………………..............42 2.1.2.3 Diminutives………………………………………………....................45 2.1.2.4 Augmentatives………………………………………….....................47 2.1.2.5 Singular-plural pairing……………………………………............48 2.1.2.6 Abstract nouns…………………………………………….................49