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Bade/Ngizim Vowels and Syllable Structure*

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Bade/Ngizim Vowels and Syllable Structure* Studies in African Linguistics 247 Volume 9, Number 3, December 1978 BADE/NGIZIM VOWELS AND SYLLABLE STRUCTURE* Russell G. Schuh University of California, Los Angeles Among the vowels of Bade and Ngizim, the short high vowels playa functional role different from the other vowels. Al­ though word final i and u are full-fledged phonemes (non­ predictable and contrastive), both the position of occurrence and the quality of the phonetic high vowels [i, a, uJ is pre­ dictable in medial position: the quality is determined by other segments in the environment; the position is determined by restrictions against certain groupings of consonants. Bade and Ngizim differ in one important respect in the placement of non-final short, high vowels, viz. through a change called PROTHESIS, original initial sequences of the type *ClaC2 ... (still realized as such in Ngizim) are now real­ ized as aC l C2 ... in Bade if Cl C2 is not an impermissible sequence. This is true for all words with no more than two consonants, though the situation is somewhat more complicated in longer words; tone of the .initial syllable is also seen to playa role. The permissible sequences of consonants, and as a consequence the environment for PROTHESIS, are discussed in the light of universal hierarchies of consonantal strength and principles of syllabification in conjunction with a restriction in Bade/Ngizim against two consonants occurring at a syllable margin. 1. Introduction 1.1. The languages. Bade and Ngizim are two closely related languages of the West Chadic branch of the Chadic family spoken in northeastern Nigeria. l *Research on Ngizim was conducted mainly from 1969-70 in Potiskum, Nigeria under the auspices of NSF grant no. GS-2279 (Paul Newman, Prin­ cipal Investigator). Research on Bade was conducted from 1973-75 in Gashua, Nigeria while I was employed as a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Nigerian Languages, Bayero University College, Kano. My thanks to Paul Newman for useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. lThe most recent classification of Chadic languages [Newman 1977J divides the Chadic family into four major branches: West Chadic, spoken almost entirely in northeastern Nigeria; Biu-Mandara, spoken in northern Cameroon and adjacent areas of Nigeria and Chad; East Chadic, spoken in Western and central Chad; and Masa, spoken in Cameroon and Chad south of N'Djamena. 248 Ngizim is spoken in an area fanning out to the east from Potiskum. Bade is spoken north of Ngizim in an area from Gashua to the west and south. Bade and Ngizim are no longer in contact, but the migration of the Ngizims southward and the ultimate separation of the two language com­ munities has taken place only in the last few hundred years. Ngizim has virtually no dialect differentiation other than a few lexical differences among villages. Bade, on the other hand, has con­ siderable differentiation at all linguistic levels (see Schuh [1977aJ for many examples in the determiner system and associative noun phrases). The dialect used here is that of Gashua and adjacent villages. Although there are a number of phonological differences between this dialect and others, all dialects are virtually identical in the respects relevant to this study. 1.2. Scope of the present study. One of the main areas of interest in Bade and Ngizim phonology is the distribution of high vowels. In fact, high vowels in both languages function primarily as epenthetic vowels to break up impermissible consonant sequences. The paper begins with a summary of the vowel pLonology of this group, concentrating on the dis­ tribution of high vowels. Following this is a description of a phonological difference between Bade and Ngizim, which is discussed and illustrated in detail. Briefly stated, this difference is the following: under certain conditions, in an initial sequence C[+~ighJ C Bade has dropped the vowel and added a prothetic high vowel to give a sequence [+~igh] CC, whereas Ngizim has not done this, e.g. Ngizim guzap 'slave' but Bade ugzaf 'slave'. Finally, certain universal principles of syllabification which have been proposed are cited as bearing on the distribution patterns of Bade and Ngizim high vowels. 2. Bade/Ngizim Vowels 2.1. Vowel nuclei. The simple vowel nuclei of Bade and Ngizim are given in (1): 249 i , i i [a] u, uu ee 00 a, aa Doubled vowels represent long vowels; the symbol a represents phonetic [~J and hence is one of the set of high vowels. The mid vowels are of secondary origin, having entered the languages through borrowing and monophthongization of diphthongs. Long aa and short a contrast in all environments, though long aa is extremely rare in word final position. Some minimal or near minimal pairs are gi ven in (2): 2 (2) aa a Ngizim Bade Ngizim Bade d:'aasu I &aasu I 'pour' dc'asu I &asu I 'finish' gaadu kaadu 'bite' gadu kadu 'break' aadau aadau 'south' adan adan 'crying' No high vowels can be reconstructed word initial for proto-Bade/ Ngizim,3 though in Bade the sound change mentioned above and discussed in detail below has produced initial [uuJ « *\~u), [iiJ « *yi), CuCJ « *Cu), and [aC] « *Ca). 2Tone marks are acute accent (') for high tone, grave accent (') for low, circumflex accent (A) for falling, and tick (') for downstep. The following transcription conventions should also be noted: c and j are voiceless and voiced. palatal affricates respectively; sh and zh are voicless and voiced palatal fricatives respectively; ny is a palatal nasal, analyzed as a unit phoneme, not a sequence; 'y is a glottalized palatal semivowel; tl and jl are voicless and voiced lateral fricatives respectively; kw and gw 8.l'e labialized velar stops, not stop-semivowel sequences. 3This statement is true for nouns. There may be one or two sur­ vivals of initial *i in verbs (see 'rabIe, i'n. 15). If we move one historical step back, we must reconstruct initial *i in both nmms and verbs. Dtlw",i, the mo::;t clc::;::oly related language to Bade and Ngizim, has initial i, which is phonetically CiiJ but does not con­ trast with [iJ in this position, e.g. )ida 'eye' (cf. Bade and Ngizim da), 1 ije 'dog' (cf. Bade and Ngizim ja). 250 Medially the long high vowels, ii and uu contrast with each other and with other vowels. There are no minimal ii/uu pairs, but there is no way to predict which vowel will be used on the basis of phonological environment. As we will see below, the short high vowels i/u/a are not in contrast medially--the quality of a medial short high vowel is phonologically predictable. Some minimal or near minimal sets showing medial contrast between ii and uu and between these vowels and the medial short high vowel(s) are given in (3): (3) long high vowels short high vowels z) idu s)idu 'slaughter' 'zadu aZdu 'six' v(ida f(ida 'hare' veda avda 'open space' duuzh) duuz) 'owl' dazh f dez ( 'vein' , , , , ruunu luunu 'spread to dry' rnu rnu « *ranu) 'fornicate' Long high vowels do not occur underlyingly in word final position. There is, however, a monophthongization rule shared by Bade and Ngizim which changes the word final diphthong -ai to [ii] and -au to [uu] when the word occurs in the middle of a phrase, e.g. (4) (Ng) rakf i c"""; } 'bed' bA;} 'it's not a bed' (Ba) laka i lakf i bai I , (Ng and Ba) sesau sasuu bai 'it's not a hut' The short high vowels and u are in contrast with each other and with a and aa (also with the mid vowels ee and 00) in word final position. There are no lexical min'imals pairs distinguished only by final or u,4 but choice of i, u, or the absence of a vowel cannot be predicted phonologically. The vowel [a] does not occur under­ lyingly word final, but word final Iii and lui change to [a] medially in a phrase under the appropriate conditions (see below). 4~linimal sets can be constructed in the verbal system where dif­ ferent verb forms are marked by final vowel changes, among other things, e.g. Ngizim ja karu 'we stole', ja kar) 'that we steal', ja kara 'we should steal'. 251 (5) Final Final u 'fat' kunamu kynamu 'fan palm' 'beard' aatar~ atal~ 'ridgerow' 'rope' kwayu a' d"Iyu , (Ng) 'jujube' (Ba) 'gourd' gabaabu daabu (Ng) 'billy-goat' (Ba) 'middle' dukshl duksl 'heavy' k'utasu J;'uksu , (Ng) 'shea-nut' (Ba) type of weed avj I 'monkey' zadu aZdu 'six' Final C kwam 'bull' zager 'foot' guzai 'pubic hair' 'slave' 'sorrel' 'ashes' 2.2. Quality of medial short high vowels. The quality of medial short high vowels is determined by phonological environment. The rule for determining the choice of [iJ, [uJ, or [aJ is given in (6).5 (6) in the env. of y +h~gh] in the env. of w or labialized velar r,--long {~ elsewhere Conditions: (1) Vowel does not precede pause. (2) When the env. for both [iJ and [uJ are met, the env. following the vowel overrides the env. preceding the vowel. 5Phonetically a wider range of vowels than these exists. Thus, following palatals the vowel tends to be somewhat fronted, e.g. Ng jajem [JI.JLmJ 'thorn', and following labial fricatives the vowel tends to be somewhat rounded, e.g. Ng varu [voruJ Igo out'. Also, the following environment generally exercises a stronger influence than preceding. Thus, the vowel following. w is not as strongly rounded as when preceding w, and in my field notes I have often transcribed a a instead of a u following w but never preceding w, e.g.
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