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Abstract

In the Buguumbe dialect of Kuria, the assignment of inflectional H tones to the verb poses at least two theoretically significant problems. First, the principles of tone assignment count to four and are not amenable to a metrical analysis, which is problematic for theories of locality. Second, for at least some speakers, the principles of tone assignment are phrase-level processes that refer to the internal structure of the verbal word, which is problematic for the notion of Bracket Erasure within Lexical Phonology.

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Notes

  1. More precisely, H tone is assigned to the ‘macrostem’, a constituent that includes the ‘stem’ plus any preceding object markers (Mwita 2008; Odden 1987). Lacking any object markers, the macrostem and stem are equivalent. Since all of the data presented below lack object markers, we will refer to the ‘macrostem’ as the ‘stem’.

  2. Data presented here are from the Buguumbe dialect of the Kuria District of southwestern Kenya and are taken mainly from Mwita (2008), whose data are based primarily, though not exclusively, on the speech of the author, Leonard Chacha Mwita. We have consulted with an additional speaker of the Buguumbe dialect, Johnes Kitololo, whose data differ somewhat from those presented in Mwita (2008). We discuss those differences in the relevant sections below and henceforth refer to our consultant as ‘JK’.

  3. Spreading operates somewhat differently in the Nyabaasi dialect of Kuria; see Odden (1987) and Cammenga (2004) for details.

  4. JK produces the verb forms in (1) with the exact same tone patterns as Mwita does, but with open mid vowels throughout the stem in the Past, Remote Future, and Inceptive. Our analysis is that the speakers differ in having /-hootoot-/ vs. /-hɔɔtɔɔt-/ as underlying forms of this root.

  5. We use the following abbreviations in interlinear glosses:

    aug

    =

    augment

    foc

    =

    focus

    fv

    =

    final vowel

    inf

    =

    infinitive

    neg

    =

    negation

    pfv

    =

    perfective

    tns

    =

    tense-aspect

          
  6. We have simplified some of the labels for tenses found in Mwita (2008). For example, what we are calling ‘Past’ here is the ‘Untimed Past Anterior Focused’ in Mwita (2008), and this example is glossed ‘(indeed) we have (already) reassured (anytime before now)’. JK translated this form simply as ‘we reassured’.

  7. Some speakers produce a final phonetically M tone in these forms, which Mwita (2008) interprets as a downstepped H, created as the result of the delinking of L. (This is one of two contexts described as having downstep in Kuria; the other is an optional realization of HLH as HHH: for some speakers, forms such as oɣo[térémek-á] ‘to be calm’ freely vary with oɣo[térémék-á]. Other contexts where distinct Hs become adjacent are not realized with downstep.) JK has a third phonetic pattern with stems of three or fewer moras, which are realized with final L. Our analysis is that for this speaker the H tone does not associate to the stem unless a fourth mora is underlyingly present; thus JK lacks rules of Final Lengthening and Final Shortening discussed below.

  8. This suffix combination undergoes vowel harmony and a pattern of allomorphy called ‘imbrication’, producing forms ending in -oye, -eye, -ini, etc. See Mwita (2008) for details.

  9. There is a complementary relationship between the environments in which Superlowering is found and those in which rightward spread is found. Spread produces surface forms with H on the penult, which therefore lack final LL sequences and do not undergo Superlowering. The constructions that lack rightward spread include several imperatives—the Hortatory Imperative 1, the Hortatory Imperative 2, and the Mandatory Imperative—and many (but not all) negative tenses (see Mwita 2008:185–186). We assume that Superlowering is not a tense-specific rule and thus only fails to apply when its phonological environment is not met, but Spread is restricted to (or blocked in) specific morpho-syntactic contexts.

  10. A reviewer asks whether Superlowering is necessarily part of the phonology of the language. Evidence for the phonological status of the rule comes from the fact that there is a surface contrast between […L L #] and […L SL #] in examples such as to-ra-[rom-a] ‘we are about to bite’ (Mwita 2008:117; see (2c) above) vs. βa-ta-re-[rom-à] ‘they will not bite (then)’ (Mwita 2008:198). Nevertheless, Superlowering is a late rule that applies after Default L Insertion. Moreover, Not all speakers have the Superlowering rule. JK produces all of the forms in (6a–b) with identical level low tones on the final mora.

  11. Note that an apostrophe indicates an unlinked element, so H’ is a floating H tone, while μ’ is a toneless mora.

  12. The formalization of melodic H assignment in (8), as in the other rules of melodic H assignment in (13) below, omits the specific tenses that the rule applies in. We have not been able to identify consistent semantic or morpho-syntactic features that define the tenses in which each of the rules of melodic H assignment apply, so we follow Mwita (2008) in assuming that each of these rules of melodic H assignment contains a listed set of tenses in which these rules apply and the various H association rules refer to these morphosyntactic features.

  13. There is a NonFinality condition on Spread, which prevents spreading into the phrase-final syllable.

  14. As suggested by a reviewer, Final Shortening may be unnecessary since there is no contrast between word-final long and short vowels. Final vowels sound short, but we have no evidence that they are phonologically short. Although we can dispense with Final Shortening in our analysis, Final Lengthening is still necessary in order to account for the difference between stems that have one mora too few (where the H does associate to the final vowel) vs. two moras too few (where the H is not realized on the verb at all).

  15. We set aside the potential criticism that LLH and LLLH are not possible melodies, as they violate the OCP (see Odden 1986 for discussion).

  16. Following Spread, an additional delinking rule is required in cases such as o-ɣo-t́ɔ-ɣó-[káraaŋg- á] ‘to not fry’ where the H of the prefix that is associated to the first mora of a long vowel is delinked from that mora, such that the entire syllable before the melodic H is L.

  17. A reviewer suggests an additional possible problem for a metrical analysis: there apparently do not exist any stress systems in the world’s languages that target the fourth syllable from an edge—a generalization noted recently by Heinz (2009:310). If “the head of a right-headed moraic colon at the left edge of the stem” is a position that can be targeted in the metrical phonology of a language, one might expect that some stress system would make reference to it. While we agree with the referee’s ultimate conclusion, we do not feel that this is the strongest argument for our position, as the lack of languages with stress on the fourth syllable could be an accidental gap (see Sect. 5 for further discussion).

  18. Thanks to Greg Iverson for raising this question.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Lee Bickmore, Chris Collins, Larry Hyman, Michael Kenstowicz, David Odden, Russ Schuh, Kenji Yoshida, the anonymous reviewers, and audiences at Indiana University, UCLA, the University of Maryland, the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, the 7th North American Phonology Conference, and the Missouri Workshop on African Linguistics for helpful feedback. We also thank Johnes Kitololo for providing Kuria data to supplement the data provided by the second author.

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Marlo, M.R., Mwita, L.C. & Paster, M. Problems in Kuria H tone assignment. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 33, 251–265 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9251-y

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