Directionality in Nkore-Kiga Sibilant Harmony: Arbitrary or Emergent?

• Douglas Pulleyblank ^[1] ; Wm. G. Bennett ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Calgary

     University of Calgary

     Canadá

     
  2. [2] University of British Columbia

     University of British Columbia

     Canadá

     
• Localización: Linguistic inquiry, ISSN 0024-3892, Vol. 49, Nº 1, 2018, págs. 1-22
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Sibilant harmony in Nkore-Kiga is an interesting problem case for agreement-based theories of harmony, particularly Agreement by Correspondence. Previous work reports that anteriority agreement is controlled by the rightmost sibilant in the stem, and also that the quality of a sibilant is allophonically determined by the following vowel. In such a system, it is impossible for surface-oriented agreement constraints to derive strictly right-to-left harmony. However, we show that Nkore-Kiga does not work in quite this way: sibilants are conditioned not allophonically, but by morphology. This allows the facts of this case to be explained within existing Agreement by Correspondence proposals