VOWEL HARMONY AND SOME RELATED PROCESSES IN FUNGWA by Samuel Kayode Akinbo BA (Hons) Linguistics, University of Ibadan, 2012 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (Linguistics) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2021 © Samuel Kayode Akinbo, 2021 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Vowel harmony and related processes in Fungwa submitted by Samuel Kayode Akinbo in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Examining Committee: Douglas Pulleyblank, Linguistics, UBC Supervisor Gunnar Olafur´ Hansson, Linguistics, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Rose-Marie Dechaine,´ Linguistics, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Anne-Michelle Tessier, Linguistics, UBC University Examiner Jessica de Villiers, English Language & Literatures, UBC University Examiner ii Abstract This dissertation investigates vowel harmony and some related processes in Fungwa, which is an endangered Kainji language spoken in Nigeria. In the language, there are two kinds of vowel harmony. In the first pattern of vowel harmony, the vowels of CV prefixes and clitics agree in backness with the vowel of the adjacent root syllable. However, V prefixes and proclitics do not exhibit this vowel harmony. I argue that the domain of harmony is subject to a word minimality condition and the requirement for an initial onset. The integration of CV prefixes and clitics into the harmonic domain with the root morpheme is forced bythe minimality condition. To satisfy the onset requirement on the domain of harmony, V pre- fixes and proclitics are excluded from the harmonic domain. The second pattern ofvowel harmony in Fungwa involves the backing or fronting of all non-high vowels in nominal roots. The fronting of non-high root vowels marks diminutive, while the backing of non- high root vowels marks augmentative. The proposal here is that the root-vowel mutations are the result of morphemes with only a back or front feature as their exponent. To encode that the mutation does not target high vowels, the argument in this dissertation is that the realisation of the featural morphemes is prominence-based. To intensify the diminutive or augmentative formation, the nominal forms can be partially reduplicated. Just as with the root-controlled harmony, the reduplication is conditioned by the requirement for an onset. A pattern of tonal alternation also interacts with vowel harmony and reduplication proving additional evidence for the domains motivated by harmony. Within the framework of Opti- mality Theory, a formal account of the vowel harmony, reduplication and tonal alternation is proposed. iii Lay Summary This dissertation investigates the co-occurrence of vowels and some related processes in Fungwa, an endangered language spoken in Nigeria. The language has two patterns of vowel co-occurrence. In the first pattern, vowels in the part of the word with themain lexical meaning determine the properties of all the vowels in a word. This agreement among vowels is referred to as harmony. I argue that the part of the word showing harmony is subject to requirements on word size and syllable structure. A second pattern of vowel co- occurrence involves mutating all root vowels to mark the notion of smallness and bigness. I argue that the mutation is conditioned by the intrinsic loudness of the vowels in a word. The patterns of vowel co-occurrence are intertwined with a pattern of prefixation showing partial copying which interacts with lexical pitch. For these patterns, I propose a formal account within current phonological theory. iv Preface This work consists an original and intellectual work of the author Samuel Akinbo, and it is solely based on fieldwork data from native speakers of Fungwa in Niger State, Nigeria. The fieldwork was approved by the Behavioural Research Ethics Board of the University of British Columbia [certificate #H15-00958]. Aspects of chapter3 were presented at 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley (March, 2016). A preliminary version of chapter 4 was presented at the Annual Meeting of Phonology at the University of California, San Diego (October, 2018) and published in the proceedings of the conference (Akinbo, 2019). At the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association at the University of British Columbia (June, 2019), a preliminary version of chapter6 was presented. The map in Figure 1.1 was created by Eric Leinberger based on coordinates that I obtained in the field. The map is used with permission. v Table of Contents Abstract......................................... iii Lay Summary ..................................... iv Preface ......................................... v Table of Contents ................................... vi List of Tables...................................... xi List of Figures .....................................xiii List of Abbreviations ................................. xiv Acknowledgments................................... xvi Dedication ....................................... xix 1 Introduction .................................... 1 1.1 The goals of this dissertation......................... 1 1.2 The people, their location and culture .................... 2 1.2.1 Their ancestral and present homes.................. 3 1.2.2 Nomenclature, culture and population................ 6 1.3 Language information............................. 7 1.4 The first goal: Documenting Fungwa..................... 9 1.4.1 Language consultants and their roles................. 9 1.4.2 Instrumentation, procedures and output ............... 11 1.5 Theoretical approaches............................ 13 1.5.1 Prosodic phonology ......................... 13 vi 1.5.2 Feature Geometry........................... 16 1.5.3 Locality condition .......................... 18 1.5.4 Optimality Theory .......................... 19 1.6 Organisation of this thesis........................... 20 2 Introduction to Fungwa phonology........................ 21 2.1 Introduction.................................. 21 2.2 Syllable structure............................... 21 2.3 Consonants .................................. 23 2.3.1 Nasals: m, n ............................. 24 2.3.2 Plosives: p/b, t/d, k/g......................... 26 2.3.3 Affricates: tS/dZ ........................... 28 2.3.4 Fricatives: f/v, s/z, S, h ........................ 29 2.3.5 Approximants: r, l, j, w........................ 30 2.4 Consonants that arise from language contact with Hausa .......... 32 2.4.1 Fricative: F .............................. 32 2.4.2 Implosives: á/á ............................ 33 ˚ 2.4.3 Ejectives: k' .............................. 34 2.5 Vowels..................................... 34 2.5.1 Oral vowels.............................. 35 2.5.2 Nasal vowels............................. 38 2.5.3 Diphthongs and long vowels..................... 39 2.5.4 Vowel harmony............................ 40 2.6 Tone...................................... 41 2.6.1 Tonal assimilation .......................... 43 2.6.2 Final lowering of a tone ....................... 44 2.6.3 Tonal overwrite with L-tone ..................... 45 2.7 Summary and conclusion........................... 45 3 Fungwa nominal morpho-syntax: background ................. 46 3.1 Preview of nominal morphology....................... 46 3.2 Noun classes ................................. 48 3.2.1 N-class prefixes: number marking.................. 49 3.2.2 N-class prefixes: pairing and semantic tendencies.......... 51 3.2.3 N-class prefixes: proto-forms .................... 58 3.2.4 Noun-class prefixes: syntax ..................... 60 vii 3.3 Noun-class agreement............................. 69 3.3.1 Overt versus covert concordial N-class agreement.......... 69 3.3.2 Concordial agreement with subject.................. 74 3.3.3 Concordial agreement with a focused nominal............ 76 3.3.4 Concordial agreement with relativised nominal........... 77 3.3.5 Concordial agreement with associative................ 79 3.3.6 Phrasal movement triggers agreement................ 80 3.4 Nominal modification............................. 91 3.4.1 Relativisation............................. 91 3.4.2 Associative construction....................... 93 3.4.3 Possessive modifiers......................... 94 3.4.4 Demonstrative modifiers....................... 96 3.4.5 Numeral modifiers.......................... 98 3.4.6 No L-tone overwrite with quantificational modifiers......... 99 3.4.7 Nominals with L-tone overwrite are a (reduced) relative clause . 100 3.5 Pronouns: inventory and syntax........................102 3.5.1 Independent (personal and demonstrative) pronouns: inventory . 102 3.5.2 Independent (personal and demonstrative) pronouns: syntax . 109 3.5.3 Dependent personal pronouns: inventory . 110 3.5.4 Dependent personal pronouns: syntax . 113 3.6 Summary and conclusion...........................115 4 Root-controlled harmony.............................117 4.1 Introduction..................................117 4.2 Root vowels are (mostly) harmonic......................118 4.2.1 Frequency counts for vowel cooccurrence . 119 4.2.2 Tendency towards harmony in Fungwa . 121 4.3 Prosodic integration of CV formatives....................121 4.3.1 Prosodic integration of CV prefixes . 122 4.3.2 Prosodic