namP´umasar´agawarata Contributions to the description of the phonology of the Bonke variety of Gamo Aïda Leistad Thomassen MA Thesis in Linguistics Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies University of Oslo June 2015 namP´umasar´agawarata Contributions to the description of the phonology of the Bonke variety of Gamo Aïda Leistad Thomassen MA Thesis in Linguistics Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies University of Oslo June 2015 c Aïda Leistad Thomassen 2015 namP´umasar´agawarata Contributions to the description of the phonology of the Bonke variety of Gamo Aïda Leistad Thomassen http://www.duo.uio.no Print: Allkopi Parkveien, Oslo Foreword The title of this thesis is taken from the data material, and means ‘two colorful cats’. /namP´u masar´agawarata/ illustrates a tonal phenomenon that is discussed in the body of this thesis. The present thesis was written as a Master’s thesis in linguistics at the University of Oslo. The aim for this project was to describe some aspects of the phonology of the Bonke variety of Gamo, an Omotic language spoken in Ethiopia. The data was collected during two periods of fieldwork in Ethiopia where I interviewed speakers of Gamo that grew up in the Bonke area. The descriptions provided here are not intended to be exhaustive. The thesis treats four parts of the phonology of the Bonke variety of Gamo: the vowels, the consonants, the phonotactics, and the tonology. The consonants and the tonology are discussed in length. I argue that the consonant system of the Bonke variety of Gamo differs to some extent from other descriptions of Gamo, when it comes to the classification of the consonants, especially the voiced affricates. Gamo has been described as a tonal accent language, but I argue that a tonal analysis is to be preferred for the Bonke variety. A word list is found in the appendix. i ii Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor Professor Rolf Theil for patient guidance and interesting discussions throughout the last year. His knowledge on so many fields within linguistics has been invaluable. That he is an expert on phonology and Omotic languages was an additional bonus. I also wish to thank Dr. Binyam Sisay Mendisu for all his help and hospitality when I was in Ehtiopia, and his help with putting me in contact with Samuel Gonderie. I am very grateful to Samuel Gonderie for spending so much of his valuable time with me during my first trip to Ethiopia. This is true for all my informants. This thesis would not exist without you. Xoossimo! I would also like to thank the Department of Film and Television Studies (TVF-avdelinga) at Lillehammer University College for lending me two microphones, and Professor Janne Bondi Johannesen for lending me her H4n recorder and for sharing her experience from her travels to Ethiopia. Thanks to Dr. Anders Vaa for answering questions regarding fieldwork, recording equipment, and phonetic analysis. Thanks to Kristin Hagen and Joel Priestley for Addis related tips. Thank you, Sara Marie Niday, for proofreading the text. This process would have been much harder had it not been for the excellent people at the Master student’s reading hall. You know who you are. Thank you for all the interesting discussions, the meals we shared, and all the support you gave me. We had a great time! Last, but not least I wish to thank my friends and my family for their support. A special thanks goes to John, who not only facilitated my work with his computer skills and helped me extensively with LATEX, but also tolerated my behavior this past year. What would I have done without you? Thank you for making tea, and for coming to Ethiopia with me. That goes for you too, Kjetil (not the tea part)! This thesis is not the work of just one person. Those who are not mentioned here are not forgotten. iii iv List of abbreviations 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person a adjective acc accusative blt Basic linguistc theory cop copula dat dative def definite f feminine foc focus h high tone l low tone m masculine n noun nom nominative np noun phrase pst past p.c. personal communication pred predicative prs present pron pronoun pl plural sg singular tbu tone bearing unit tv terminal vowel v verb vp verb phrase v vi Contents 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Outlineofthethesis .............................. 3 1.2 Motivationandaim................................ 4 1.3 Gamo-thepeopleandthelanguage . .. 4 1.3.1 Classification ............................... 5 1.3.2 VariationwithinGamo.......................... 7 1.3.3 Writtenlanguage ............................. 8 1.3.4 Grammaticaloverview .......................... 9 2 Methodology 13 2.1 Theoryortheoreticalframework. ..... 13 2.1.1 Phoneme theory and Basic linguistic theory . ..... 16 2.2 Thefirstperiodoffieldwork . .. 17 2.2.1 Theinformant............................... 18 2.2.2 Elicitation................................. 19 2.2.3 Whichwordstoaskfor? ......................... 20 2.3 Thesecondperiodoffieldwork. ... 20 2.3.1 Theinformants .............................. 21 2.3.2 Theinterviews .............................. 21 2.3.3 Problems ................................. 22 2.4 Linguisticfieldwork.............................. .. 22 3 Vowels 25 3.1 Earlierdescriptions . .. .. .. ... 25 3.1.1 Diphthongs ................................ 26 3.2 The vowels of the Bonke variety of Gamo . .... 27 3.2.1 Realization ................................ 28 3.2.2 Contrastivefunction . 29 3.2.3 Distribution................................ 31 3.3 Diphthongs .................................... 32 3.4 Summary ..................................... 36 vii viii CONTENTS 4 Consonants 37 4.1 Stateoftheart .................................. 37 4.1.1 Hompó(1990)............................... 37 4.1.2 Taylor(1994) ............................... 38 4.1.3 Sottile(1999) ............................... 39 4.1.4 HaywardandChabo(2014) . 40 4.1.5 Harmony.................................. 41 4.1.6 Consonantclusters ............................ 42 4.1.7 Gemination ................................ 43 4.1.8 Summary ................................. 46 4.2 The consonants of the Bonke variety of Gamo . ..... 47 4.3 Pulmonicconsonants .............................. 48 4.3.1 /p/..................................... 49 4.3.2 /b/..................................... 50 4.3.3 /t/..................................... 51 4.3.4 /d/..................................... 52 4.3.5 /k/..................................... 52 4.3.6 /g/..................................... 53 4.3.7 /h/..................................... 54 4.3.8 /s/..................................... 56 4.3.9 /z/..................................... 57 4.3.10 /S/..................................... 57 4.3.11 /Z/..................................... 58 4.3.12 /ţ/..................................... 58 4.3.13 /Ù/..................................... 59 4.3.14 [dz]..................................... 60 4.3.15 [Ã]..................................... 60 4.3.16 The phoneme status of the fricatives and affricates . ........ 61 4.3.17 Nasals ................................... 63 4.3.18 /r/..................................... 65 4.3.19 /l/ ..................................... 66 4.3.20/w/ .................................... 67 4.3.21 /j/..................................... 67 4.4 Glottalicconsonants ............................. .. 68 4.4.1 /P/..................................... 68 4.4.2 /k’/ .................................... 69 4.4.3 /ţ’/ .................................... 70 4.4.4 /Ù’/ .................................... 70 4.4.5 /á/..................................... 71 CONTENTS ix 4.4.6 /â/..................................... 71 4.5 The phonologically distinctive relevant properties . ............. 71 4.6 Consonantclusters ............................... 73 4.7 Gemination .................................... 76 4.8 Harmony...................................... 78 4.9 Summary ..................................... 78 5 Phonotactics 79 5.1 Syllable structure in the Bonke variety of Gamo . ........ 79 5.1.1 Combinationofsyllables . 81 5.2 Restrictionsonconsonants . .... 81 5.2.1 Consonantclusters ............................ 82 5.2.2 Gemination ................................ 82 5.3 Restrictionsonvowels . .. .. .. .. 82 6 Tonology 83 6.1 Introduction.................................... 83 6.1.1 Whatisatonelanguage? ........................ 83 6.2 Earlierdescriptions . .. .. .. ... 85 6.3 TonesintheBonkevarietyofGamo. ... 90 6.3.1 Thenumberoftones ........................... 90 6.3.2 Thetonebearingunit .......................... 91 6.3.3 Thetoneanalysis ............................. 93 6.4 Toneonwordsandphrases. 94 6.4.1 Toneonwordsutteredinisolation. ... 95 6.4.2 Toneonextendedphrases . 100 6.4.3 TonelessNPheads ............................ 104 6.5 Toneonverbs................................... 106 6.6 Toneonsentences................................. 109 6.7 Downdrift ..................................... 111 6.8 Intonation..................................... 112 6.9 Tonalaccentlanguage?. 112 6.10Summary ..................................... 114 7 Summary 117 7.1 Furtherresearch................................. 118 Appendix A List of words 123 x CONTENTS List of Figures 1.1 Classification of Omotic fromHayward(2003,p.242) . 6 1.2 Classification of Omotic basedonM.Bender(2003b,p.2) . 6 4.1 Spectrogram of the word /kurţatţé/ ‘small, narrow basket’ .......... 77 4.2 Spectrogram of the word /dangárssi/ ‘elephant’ ................. 77 6.1 Spectrogram of the word /moiâô/ ‘lip’ ...................... 92