VOWEL PHENOMENA OF GUANG LANGUAGES by LAUREN TIDEMAN B.A., Houghton College, 2014 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF LINGUISTICS in the FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY October 2019 © Lauren Tideman, 2019 Abstract The Guang language family of Ghana has received a fair amount of study over the past several decades. Snider’s (1990b) work is the most extensive study on Guang phonology. The aim of this thesis will be to cite new information and build upon Snider’s work to gain a better understanding of Guang phonology, specifically in relation to vowel systems and phenomena. Some of the most prominent phonological processes in Guang involving vowels include ATR and rounding harmony, and hiatus resolution. This study examines the consistencies and differences among Guang languages with regard to vowel phenomena. While some interesting variation does exist across the Guang language family, examination of available resources and data, along with some acoustic analysis, show that Guang vowel phenomena are generally consistent. The most important aspect that is consistent across Guang languages, despite differing analyses and descriptions, is that all exhibit nine-vowel systems. i Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iv 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 2. Background ............................................................................................................................... 1 2.1 Taxonomy of Guang languages ........................................................................................................2 2.2 Previous work in Guang ...................................................................................................................3 3. Guang vowel inventories .......................................................................................................... 5 3.1 Overview of Guang vowel inventories .............................................................................................5 3.1.1 Nasal vowels ................................................................................................................................7 3.1.2 Long vowels .................................................................................................................................8 3.2 Centralization ..................................................................................................................................10 3.3 The acoustics of Guang vowels .......................................................................................................10 3.4 The low vowel and its allophone .....................................................................................................15 3.5 Issues of vowel perception and voice quality ................................................................................17 3.6 Summary of vowel inventory issues ...............................................................................................21 4. ATR harmony ......................................................................................................................... 21 4.1 Overview of ATR harmony in Guang languages ..........................................................................21 4.2 ATR Harmony and affixes in Guang .............................................................................................22 4.2.1 Prefixes .......................................................................................................................................23 4.2.2 The diminutive suffix .................................................................................................................24 4.2.3 The agentive suffix .....................................................................................................................27 4.2.4 Other suffixes .............................................................................................................................29 4.3 The Low Vowel and ATR harmony ...............................................................................................31 4.3.2 Is /a/ opaque to ATR harmony? .................................................................................................33 4.3.3 The low vowel in Gonja .............................................................................................................36 4.4 Post-lexical ATR spread ..................................................................................................................38 4.5 Directionality ....................................................................................................................................41 4.6 [+ATR] dominance ..........................................................................................................................42 4.7 Summary ..........................................................................................................................................44 5. Rounding Harmony ................................................................................................................ 46 5.1 Typology of rounding harmony .....................................................................................................46 5.1.1 Is it harmony? .............................................................................................................................46 5.1.2 Categorizing round harmony systems ........................................................................................46 5.1.2 Is the feature [round] privative? .................................................................................................47 5.2 Rounding harmony in Guang .........................................................................................................48 5.2.1 Noun-class prefixes ....................................................................................................................48 5.2.2 Person and possessive markers ..................................................................................................55 5.2.3 Tense-aspect markers .................................................................................................................56 5.2.4 Post-lexical Round Spread .........................................................................................................59 5.2.5 Comparison with Akan ..............................................................................................................60 5.3 Issues of round harmony and consonants .....................................................................................60 5.3.1 Inventories ..................................................................................................................................60 5.3.2 Environments .............................................................................................................................62 5.3.3 Consonantal interference ............................................................................................................62 5.4 Summary ..........................................................................................................................................64 ii 6. Hiatus Resolution .................................................................................................................... 66 6.1 General typological findings ...........................................................................................................66 6.2 Hiatus resolution in Guang .............................................................................................................67 6.3 Vowel sequences and syllable types ...............................................................................................68 6.4 Vowel elision .....................................................................................................................................71 6.4.1 V1 elision ...................................................................................................................................71 6.4.2 Compensatory lengthening .........................................................................................................73 6.4.3 V2 elision? .................................................................................................................................75 6.4.4 Prefixes .......................................................................................................................................77 6.4.5 Suffixes ......................................................................................................................................78 6.4.6 In fast speech ..............................................................................................................................79 6.5 Coalescence ......................................................................................................................................79 6.6 Glide formation ................................................................................................................................80 6.7 Epenthesis