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This paper describes advanced tongue-root [ATR] harmony in Dagbani, a Gur language of Ghana, focusing on three distinct segments: triggers, targets, and blockers of [+ATR] harmony. Dagbani has a bidirectional [ATR] harmony, with [+ATR] as the dominant value. A root [i] triggers a left-to-right harmony targeting vowels in suffixes and clitics while the mid vowels [e, o] trigger a right-to-left direction of harmony targeting root vowels. There are two restrictions on harmony. First, a height similarity condition restricts harmony to a trigger and target that are both [+high] or [-high]. Second, a class of opaque consonants [1, r, s] block the spread of [+ATR] between /i/ and an eligible vowel target. However, the opacity is unidirectional as the coronals do not block a right-to-left harmony. The paper addresses the controversy on whether such opacity effects exist in harmony patterns and discusses other issues of general theoretical interest in harmony patterns, such as parasitic harmony and the position of low vowels in [ATR] harmony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I want to show in this paper that Ayizɔ, a Gbe dialect spoken in the southern part of Benin, has two underlying tones: H and L. The other tones, i.e., M, LH, HL, MH and HM, are realizations of these two tones. I shall demonstrate that the HL tone of nouns are derived through a H-Insertion-Rule, when the consonant is a voiceless obstruent; this high tone prevents the spreading of the prefix L tone through a voiceless obstruent. Interestingly, in this dialect, the application of the rules depends on the nature of the consonants. The LH tone is derived through a L-Spreading-Rule. The MH tone is derived through a M-Spreading rule, whereas the HM is derived through H-Insertion Rule and an assimilation rule of the final L tone. The M tone is an allotone of L in the environment of a H tone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bambara foot is represented as a rhythmic unit which can be disyllabic or monosyllabic. Foot-parsing is both segmentally and morphologically conditioned. A foot can coincide with a morpheme or be smaller than a morpheme, but it cannot include more than one morpheme. The main factors for foot-parsing are: types of initial consonants, types of internal consonants and vocalic combinations; directionality (left to right) is a secondary factor. Segmentation into feet is relevant for the realization of tone. Disyllabic feet are subdivided into two types, heavy and light; heavy feet have a long vowel in the initial syllable, while light feet have a short vowel in this position which is susceptible to elision (depending on phonotactics). It seems unnecessary to postulate stress in Bambara. The views of previous researchers on the Bambara foot are critically analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes ideophones in Leggbo, a Cross River language of Nigeria. It focuses on two processes – fortition and reduplication – in the language and their special relation to ideophones. Fortition involves consonant gemination and lengthening and is used for intensification. Reduplication can be either lexical or grammatical. Ideophones can have an inherent repetitive structure but they can also employ reduplication like other modifiers to signal the plurality of nouns, or the diminutive of verbs. Both fortition and reduplication can occur in the same form, especially in ideophones. It is speculated that fortition could have arisen diachronically in ideophones before spreading to other parts of the language. If this scenario is assumed, it argues for treating ideophones in Leggbo, if not in other languages, as central rather than marginal parts of linguistic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the problem of coronal palatalization in Harari (Ethiopian Semitic) triggered by the 2nd person singular feminine non-perfective subject suffix /-i/. The palatalization process is unusual in two respects: (a) palatalization operates at a distance over other vowels and consonants and (b) palatalization may optionally affect more than one coronal consonant in the same stem, including prefixes. Although long-distance palatalization has been documented for other languages, it has been analyzed either as a floating affix or as consonant harmony. While Harari palatalization shares properties with both of these phenomena, it should be analyzed as neither. Harari palatalization targets a specific group of consonants and is modeled using a correspondence agreement constraint rather than aligning or spreading the palatalizing feature. This accounts for its ability to skip over intervening consonants and vowels, including front vowels and palato-alveolar consonants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu (Proto-PAB) has recently been reconstructed with a two-grade consonant mutation system, purely on internal evidence. Even more recently it has been shown that all three mutation grades of the steminitial consonant systems of a sample of,five Fula-type languages of Senegal and Guinea are readily derivable from Proto-PAB if one of the two Proto-PAB grades is assumed to have split into two. This suggests that Proto-PAB has the potential to serve as a pilot Proto-Niger-Congo in essentially the same way as a "Proto - Germanic-Latin- Greek-Sanskrit" served the pioneers' of linguistic reconstruction as a pilot Proto-Indo-European. This article addresses two matters'/hat arise. The first is the need to discredit the demonstrably unwarranted but widely held belief that reconstruction must be based from the outset on a representative sample of all the daughter languages. By this view, the very idea of a pilot protolanguage is improper The second matter is the lack of an adequately updated account of ProtoPAB. There have been several proposals for revision since Stewart (1993), the most recent comprehensive account, and this article offers (i) a synthesis covering the consonants' and vowels of the whole CV(CV) root, together with the diachronic rules for the derivation of the reflexes, both in Proto-Bantu and in Akan, of each consonant or vowel in each position, and (ii) 109 comparative pairs across Proto-Bantu and Akan displaying the regular sound correspondences predicted by the diachronic rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]