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the words,
‘far’, F F F F
‘different’, B= B= ‘above half’, are part of a category which Kamanda
calls quasi-nominal. These forms are traditionally interpreted as adverbs rather than
nouns. Two of the words, @=( @=( @=( @=( ‘pointed’ and @ @ @ @ ‘short’, are adjectives which are
bisyllabic in their citation form (=(@=( =(@=( =(@=( =(@=( and @ @). @ @ Finally, one word F=( F=( F=( ‘above’, is in fact
a preposition.
In the related language Linda, Cloarec-Heiss (1986: 126) considers the first vowel
of V1CV1 words to be a derivational prefix. However, I argue against interpreting it as a
prefix in Mono for the following reasons. First, not all of the forms are derived from
other grammatical categories. For example, the word ‘word’ is not derived from a
verb. Second, considering the first vowel a prefix does not explain why the process only
occurs with monosyllabic verb roots. The purely phonological account explains the cases
in which the process occurs. I say more on this in Section 7.1.1.
A second factor which lends support to the notion of a MC on Mono nouns is that
there are cases where the unaugmented forms in (3) above actually surface in the context
of a sentence or phrase. For example, in a noun phrase where a V1CV1 noun follows an
adjective, the noun optionally surfaces as CV:
(6) =(@=( =(@=( =(@=( =(@=(
true word
‘That’s right.’
In verbs where the object has been grammaticalized, the object surfaces as CV:
(7) a. (F= (F= (F= (F=
INF-say word
‘to speak’
b. (MK (MK (MK (MK I( I( I( I(
INF-see place
‘to understand’
Third, when underlyingly monosyllabic nouns are compounded, the resulting
word is bisyllablic. The minimality condition is satisfied, and as a result SRA does not
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