jeff_l
(Jeff_L)
#1
148 3 Phonology
d. FePl t-i- nt-9- before CC plus {a i u}
""t-3- (dialectally ^-0-) before a
single C plus {a i u}
[for the dialectology of 't-a- or "t-0- see below]
Prefix Reducation does not occur if a pause, or a parenthetical insert,
intervenes between the reduction trigger and the noun in question. In (126),
hakadd 'as well as' normally requires Prefix Reduction on the following noun,
but the intervening daer 'also' (dialectal for ddr) and the pause allow the
following noun ('livestock animals') to appear with full prefix, here PI i-.
(126) ...as O-saekkaetew-sen hakadd daer,
... Instr Pl-child-MaPl as.well.as also,
i-razzej-asn hiillasn
Pl-livestock-MaPl very.much
'(Disease has disturbed) the children, as well as the livestock, very
much.'
Some singular nouns already begin in a short vowel ae or a, whether it is
segmentable as a prefix or part of the stem. MaSg examples: addinaet 'people'
(dialectally seddinaet), ae-lawi 'cockiness'. Such nouns undergo no further
reduction after prepositions or in postverbal subject function. The same is true
of FeSg nouns with t- plus a short vowel, e.g. t-a-rlali-t-t 'women's cry of
joy'. Likewise, the few C-initial nouns that do not take nominal prefixes (e.g.
ksemmo 'illness') undergo no change in the syntactic positions indicated. For
all of these invariant nouns, there is no audible difference between e.g. subject
and object directly following a verb stem.
However, the majority of nouns do begin with a full-V prefix (with or
without FeSg t-). These undergo Prefix Reduction in the relevant positions:
MaSg α-kaebor 'sparrow', dependent "ae-kaebor, MaPl ί-kbar, dependent
"a-kbar ; FeSg t-a-käebar-t, dependent "t-se-kaebar-t, FePl t-l-kabr-en,
dependent "t-s-kabr-en varying dialectally with 't-0-kabr-en (with phrasal
accent on the preceding morpheme x).
The choice between "a- and nas- here is consistent with an initial reduction
to "ae-, which is then subject (most systematically in T-ka) to Short-V
Harmony (46) (§3.2.6), which converts /ae/ to a when the following syllable
has a high V. In dialects like A-grm that do not apply Short-V Harmony, we
get "ae- as the reduced form of Ία- or 'e- regardless of the vocalism of the
following syllable.
The choice between "a- and zero (-0-) in the plural is somewhat tricky. In
all dialects, we get a phonetic schwa when the following stem begins with a
CC cluster, as in i-hrühuv-asn 'migrations', reduced form "a-hrühur-aen. In
T-ka and some Gao-area dialects, if the stem proper begins with CV..., we get
"0- in the MaPl (for i-), but "t-a- with a clear schwa in the FePl (for t-i-). In
