jeff_l
(Jeff_L)
#1
146 3 Phonology
T-ka nearly always has ο instead of e, as in PerfP -aess-oraed- 'bathe' (versus
A-grm -sss-erasd-, Κ and R -sess-eraed-), cf. VblN α-s-irsd or a-s-lrad (all
dialects). Nevertheless, in T-ka we do get e instead of ο when the following
lexical C is w, as in PerfP -sess-ewaed- 'raise price' and -aess-ewael- 'make
noise' (VblN's α-s-iwad, a-s-lwal). See §8.1.5.
Of the two -CDCVC- verb stem types, -CuCvC- and -CiCvC-, -CuCvC- is
most common in underived stems, but when C 2 is w we get -CiCvC-, as in
-jiwvd- 'flee' (PerfP -sejewasd-). Five of seven known underived -CiCvC-
stems are in fact -CiwvC- verbs, and the other two are an Arabic borrowing
and a frozen mediopassive derivative. See §7.3.1.7 for details. The dialectal
alternation of -buyvs- and -biwvs- for the verb 'wound', covered under the
rubric of metathesis in §3.2.2.1, is also relevant here.
These dissimilations are internal to the ablaut system, and are not regular
phonological rules.
In V-final nouns with suffixal PI, there is often an extra stem-final w in the
PI, and the stem-final V often mutates before this w. However, a range of
Sg/Pl vocalic pairings are found, all highly morphologized, and dissimilation
seems to be a minor factor. For the data see §4.1.2.6.
3.5 Syntactically controlled phonological processes
There is a pervasive interaction between "syntax" and "phonology" in
Tamashek, which allows us to make a strong case for a morphological view of
the grammar. That is, instead of a model of grammar that starts with an
autonomous abstract syntax, and then allows a phonological module to execute
more or less natural phonological adjustments to the outputs of the syntax,
Tamashek lends itself to a model where grammatical categories, linear
ordering, and phonology (segmental, accentual, and ablaut) are inextricably
intertwined.
The common denominator of the phenomena treated in this section is a
repeating "figure" of the type [X+Y...], where X is some phrase-initial word or
particle, and Y is a word whose phonological form is modified in this syntactic
context. The modifications of Y are mostly, but not always, interpretable as
reductions. The [X+Y...] groupings do not correspond to phrasal boundaries in
current formal syntactic models. For example, the combination [verb
+ subject] (excluding object) is not recognized as a phrase in any syntactic
theory I know of. Therefore even the phrasal bracketings relevant to the
morphophonological processes described here are idiosyncratic to Tamashek.
On top of this, the phrasal bracketings are not identical to those needed for
phrasal accent. For example, [verb + object] counts as a phrase for
accentuation, as does [verb + subject], but of the two only [verb + subject}
shows Prefix Reduction in the noun. Therefore converting "syntactic" phrases
to "prosodic" phrases by rebracketing, as a way of explaining how Tamashek
microsyntactic organization diverges from natural syntactic groups, will not
