here - 5th International Conference on Bantu Languages

Morpho-phonology and metrical structure in Nata
Andrei Anghelescu
University of British Columbia
andrei.anghelescu@alumni.ubc.ca
This talk has two goals; first, I will provide an initial description of nominal tone in Nata, a Lacustrine
Bantu language spoken in Tanzania. Second, I will relate morpho-prosodic categories below
the word level to metrical units. Bantu languages have been argued to provide evidence for sublexical
prosodic domains such as the prosodic stem and the prosodic root, which are constituents of the prosodic
word (Inkelas, 1989). Likewise, metrical structure has been argued to play an important role in tonal
phenomenon (Downing, 1990). Recent work on the phonology-syntax interface has argued that a default
mapping of syntactic constituents to prosodic constituents is mediated by prosodic constraints (Selkirk,
2011). I will argue that t<strong>here</strong> is a one-to-one mapping of morphological to phonological domains and
that this mapping is subject to metrical constraints. I will focus on tone patterns in the nominal and verbal
domains, demonstrating first that they are both sensitive to the same type of morpho-phonological
boundaries and then that metrical structure interacts with tone mapping in the nominal domain.
Take as illustration the example below. In the singular (1a, d) and plural (1b, e), high tone is realized
on the root initial syllable. In the diminutive singular (1c, f), we can observe that high tone is no longer
aligned with the left edge of the noun root, but instead falls on the third syllable of the word.
(1) Nouns in the singular, plural and diminutive 1
a. o-mo-téreBi ‘ladle’
PPF-C3-ladle
b. e-me-téreBi ‘ladles’
PPF-C4-ladle
c. /0-rii-teréBi ‘small ladle’
PPF-C5-ladle
d. e-Ge-sóontSo ‘plate’
PPF-C7-plate
e. e-Be-sóontSo ‘plates’
PPF-C8-plate
f. /0-rii-soontSó ‘small plate’
PPF-C5-plate
In most noun classes, the third syllable is identical to the left edge of the noun root; however, in noun
classes without a preprefix (such as class 5), the third syllable does not coincide with any morphological
boundary. I argue that the third syllable has no special status, but rather that in the default case it
corresponds to the left edge of the root; additionally, a metrical constraint prevents high tone from being
root initial when t<strong>here</strong> are less than two syllables preceding the root.
The key theoretical implication is that the mapping of morphological to phonological domains is
the same as the mapping between syntactic and phonological domains; importantly, both mappings are
subject to prosodic constraints.
References
Downing, L. J. (1990). Local and metrical tone shift in Nguni. Studies in African Linguistics, 21(3):261–
317.
Inkelas, S. (1989). Prosodic Constituency in the Lexicon. PhD thesis, Stanford.
Selkirk, E. (2011). The syntax-phonology interface. In Goldsmith, J., Riggle, J., and Yu, A. C. L.,
editors, The Handbook of Phonological Theory, chapter 14, pages 435–484. Blackwell Publishing,
second edition.
1 Examples are provided in IPA transcription. C# refers to the noun class, PPF the preprefix (sometimes known as augment).
Class 5 contributes a diminutive interpretation to some nouns.
1
GS