African linguistics across the disciplines Selected papers from the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics Edited by Samson Lotven Silvina Bongiovanni Phillip Weirich Robert Botne Samuel Gyasi Obeng language Contemporary African Linguistics 5 science press Contemporary African Linguistics Editors: Akinbiyi Akinlabi, Laura J. Downing In this series: 1. Payne, Doris L., Sara Pacchiarotti & Mokaya Bosire (eds.). Diversity in African languages: Selected papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. 2. Persohn, Bastian. The verb in Nyakyusa: A focus on tense, aspect and modality. 3. Kandybowicz, Jason, Travis Major & Harold Torrence (eds.). African linguistics on the prairie: Selected papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. 4. Clem, Emily, Peter Jenks & Hannah Sande (eds.). Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. 5. Lotven, Samson, Silvina Bongiovanni, Phillip Weirich, Robert Botne & Samuel Gyasi Obeng (eds.). African linguistics across the disciplines: Selected papers from the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. ISSN: 2511-7726 African linguistics across the disciplines Selected papers from the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics Edited by Samson Lotven Silvina Bongiovanni Phillip Weirich Robert Botne Samuel Gyasi Obeng language science press Lotven, Samson, Silvina Bongiovanni, Phillip Weirich, Robert Botne & Samuel Gyasi Obeng (ed.). 2019. African linguistics across the disciplines: Selected papers from the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (Contemporary African Linguistics 5). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/226 © 2019, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-96110-212-9 (Digital) 978-3-96110-213-6 (Hardcover) ISSN: 2511-7726 DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3520612 Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/226 Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=226 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Felix Kopecky, Kenneth Steimel, Sebastian Nordhoff Proofreading: Ahmet Bilal Özdemir, Alena Witzlack, Alexis Pierrard, Amir Ghorbanpour, Andreas Hölzl, Evans Gesure, Jeroen van de Weijer, Keith Allan, Lotta Aunio, Rosey Billington, Sreekar Raghotham, Teresa Proto, Valentin Vydrin, Yvonne Treis Fonts: Libertinus, Libertinus Math, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Language Science Press Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin, Germany langsci-press.org Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Contents 1 Syllable structure and loanword adaptation in Fròʔò Yranahan Traoré & Caroline Féry 1 2 Variable word-final vowel deletion and reduction in Gurmancema: A maximum entropy model Maggie Baird 29 3 Toward a better understanding of speech-language disorders in African countries: The case of speech sound disorders in Cameroon Aurélie Takam 47 4 Efik nominal tonal alternations as phrasal morphology Eleanor Glewwe 71 5 Number and animacy in the Teke noun class system Larry M. Hyman, Florian Lionnet & Christophère Ngolele 89 6 Tone, orthographies, and phonological depth in African languages Michael Cahill 103 7 Prosodic restructuring in Somali nominal constructions Laura J. Downing & Morgan Nilsson 125 8 DP-internal structure and agreement in Nafara Bertille Baron 143 9 Complement clause C-agreement beyond subject phi-agreement in Ikalanga Rose Letsholo & Ken Safir 159 10 Optional past tense in Wolof M. Ryan Bochnak & Martina Martinović 187 Contents 11 The Syntax of experiencers in Sereer-Siin Khady Tamba 203 12 Focus in Limbum Laura Becker, Imke Driemel & Jude Nformi Awasom 219 13 Universal quantification in the nominal domain in Kihehe Kelly Kasper-Cushman 239 14 A closer look at the Akan determiner bi: An epistemic indefinite analysis Augustina Pokua Owusu 257 15 The interaction of ‑ø‑…‑íle with aspectual classes in Nyamwezi Ponsiano Sawaka Kanijo 281 16 Logophoricity in Ibibio Lydia Newkirk 309 17 Control of logophoric pronouns in Gengbe Thomas Grano & Samson Lotven 325 Index 338 ii Chapter 1 Syllable structure and loanword adaptation in Fròʔò Yranahan Traoré Caroline Féry University of Frankfurt This article examines the syllable structure in Fròʔò, a dialect of Tagbana spoken in Côte d’Ivoire. In our analysis, the underlying syllable structure in Fròʔò is lim- ited to C(C)V and V. Other surface syllable shapes, such as CVC, are the result of synchronic morphophonological processes. These processes include the formation of surface complex onsets through vowel deletion, the simplification of underly- ing complex onsets through liquid deletion, and the merger of bisyllabic CVCV sequences into monosyllables (CVC and CV). Evidence of these phonological pro- cess can also be found in loanwords, where syllable repairs take place. 1 Introduction This article studies the syllable structure in Fròʔò (Tagbana), a Senoufo (Gur) language of Côte d’Ivoire (see Clamens 1952, Manessy 1962, Herault & Mlanhoro 1973, Miehe 2012, Miehe et al. 2012) and the effects that syllabic restrictions have on loanword adaptation. §2 introduces the underlying syllable structure and the basic phonotactic rules of Fròʔò. §3 discusses three resyllabification processes. First, two kinds of vowel deletion are introduced: one leading to coda emergence, and another one leading to complex onsets. The second resyllabification process is liquid deletion leading to onset simplification. §4 examines the process of merg- ing two monosyllabic morphemes into a single syllable. §5 focuses on the way phonotactic restrictions influence loanword adaptations. §6 summarises and con- cludes. Yranahan Traoré & Caroline Féry. 2019. Syllable structure and loanword adaptation in Fròʔò. In Samson Lotven, Silvina Bongiovanni, Phillip Weirich, Robert Botne & Samuel Gyasi Obeng (eds.), African linguistics across the disciplines: Selected papers from the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 1–28. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3520565 Yranahan Traoré & Caroline Féry Before turning to syllable structure, let us briefly introduce the phonemic in- ventory of Fròʔò, its lexical and grammatical tones and the nominal class sys- tem. The consonants are shown in Table 1. There are 22 consonants, 10 of which are stops and two are voiceless fricatives, but there is no voiced fricative. The 10 stops are divided into voiceless and voiced ones with five places of articula- tion: labial, alveolar, palatal, velar and labio-velar. Two laryngeal obstruents are present as well: [ʔ] and [h]. Additionally, there are six sonorants, four of which are nasals. The remaining sonorants are two glides, [j] and [w], and two liquids, [l] and [r]. The Fròʔò consonant system is close to that of other Gurlanguages, although some differences emerge as well. For instance, voiced fricatives have been shown to exist in other Gur languages. Table 1: Fròʔò consonants labial alveolar palatal velar labio−velar glottal voiceless p t c k kp ʔ Plosive voiced b d ɟ g gb Fricative f s h Nasal m n ɲ ŋ Glide j w Lateral l Rhotic r Fròʔò has seven oral vowels that can be long in some environments, in partic- ular before a heteromorphemic [r] or [l]. All vowels have nasal correspondents, except for the mid [+ATR] ones, [e] and [o], that are never nasalized; thus all in all the language shows 12 vowels, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. In this article, IPA is used (Fròʔò has no written system). i u ĩ ũ e o ɛ ɔ ɛ̃ ɔ̃ a ã Figure 1: Short vowels Figure 2: Nasal vowels 2 1 Syllable structure and loanword adaptation in Fròʔò Fròʔò has three level tones, high (H), mid (M) and low (L). There are no contour tones. The syllable is the tone bearing unit (TBU) and every syllable in every word carries its own tone, regardless of the category and the length of the word. In other words, all vowels in the language bear one of these three tones. Some examples of (near-) minimal pairs appear in (1).1 Table 2: Tonal minimal pairs H M L hũ̀-mũ̀7 ‘oil’ hũ̄-mũ̄7 ‘worship’ hṹ-mṹ7 ‘the drink’ pà̰1 ‘monitor lizard pā̰ ‘to come’ fà̰1 ‘bamboo tree fā̰ ‘to build’ ɉīō5 ‘house’ ɉíó ‘to carry’ kɔ̄lɔ̄ ‘to cough’ kɔ́-lɔ́ ‘monkey-cm1’ fìὲːrὲ6 ‘the sham’ pέːrέ ‘to sell’ Tones play a large role in the grammatical domain, as exemplified in (1), where a change in grammatical tone signifies a change in tense/aspect/mood of the utterance. (1) Tonal changes due to aspect changes a. kí mã̀ glã́ pro.obj pro-2sg please ‘It will please you’ b. kí mã́ glã́ pro.obj pro-2sg like ‘Did it please you?’ c. kī mã̄ glã̀ pro.obj pro-2sg like ‘Make it please you!’ Combinations of tones in the nominal domain reveal the existence of floating tones in part of the vocabulary, compare (2a) with (2b). The high tone on the verb síɔ́ in (2b) is the result of a floating tone on the noun (marked with a superscript H) that spreads up to the verb.2 1Every noun belongs to a nominal class, see below. In the examples in Table 2, the numbers “7” and “1” indicate that the nouns belong to class 7 or class 1. The word kɔ́-lɔ́ ‘monkey’ consists of a lexical root and a class marker of class 1. 2Thanks to Annie Rialland for working this out with us. 3 Yranahan Traoré & Caroline Féry (2) Floating tones a. àtò:lò + sīɔ̄ → àtò:lò sīɔ̄ spoon-cm2 to buy ‘to buy a spoon’ b. àblòʔòH + sīɔ̄ → àblòʔò síɔ́ peanut-cm5 to buy ‘to buy a peanut’ Nouns are the result of a sequence of a lexical root and an overt or a covert class marker (CM). Table 3 provides an overview of the nominal classes in Fròʔò (see Traoré and Féry, unpublished, for nouns and nominal classes). Every noun belongs to one of seven nominal classes, which are classified according to the phonological form of their class marker and/or associated functional morphemes, i.e., the morphemes in an agreement relation with the head noun (see Corbett 1991).