Home Nasality in Dagbani prosody
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Nasality in Dagbani prosody

  • Fusheini Hudu EMAIL logo and Mohammed Osman Nindow
Published/Copyright: November 6, 2020
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed analysis of nasality in Dagbani, a Gur language of Ghana, and the role it plays in Dagbani prosody. It demonstrates that the nasal is at the centre of defining the range of what is possible in Dagbani prosodic patterns. Nasals provide the basis for determining the full range of syllable types and the tone bearing unit of Dagbani; nasals are the only coda consonants that licence vowel lengthening; and nasals provide the only cases of phonological non-vocalic geminates. The overall effects of the influence of nasality is the emergence of complex prosodic structures. Contrary to the crosslinguistically acclaimed marked position of the coda, the CVN syllable is the default, unmarked syllable in Dagbani.


Corresponding author: Fusheini Hudu, Department of Linguistics, University of Ghana, DeGraft Hanson Building, Room 20, Legon, Accra, Ghana, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the editors, Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk and another (anonymous) reviewer for very useful comments. All errors remain ours.

References

Blevins, Juliet. 1995. The syllable in phonological theory. In John Goldsmith (ed.), Handbook of phonological theory, 206–244. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.10.1111/b.9780631201267.1996.00008.xSearch in Google Scholar

Clements, George N. 1990. The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In John Kingston & Mary Beckmann (eds.), Papers in laboratory phonology I, 283–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511627736.017Search in Google Scholar

Hayes, Bruce. 1989. Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20(2). 253–306. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178626.Search in Google Scholar

Hudu, Fusheini. 2005. Number marking in Dagbani. Edmonton: University of Alberta MSc thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Hudu, Fusheini. 2010. Dagbani tongue-root harmony: A formal account with ultrasound investigation. Vancouver: University of British Columbia dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Hudu, Fusheini. 2014a. What is the phonological word in Dagbani? A positional faithfulness account. Ghana Journal of Linguistics 3(1). 1–44. https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v3i1.1.Search in Google Scholar

Hudu, Fusheini. 2014b. [ATR] feature involves a distinct tongue root articulation: Evidence from ultrasound imaging. Lingua 143. 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2013.12.009.Search in Google Scholar

Hudu, Fusheini. 2018. Asymmetries in the phonological behaviour of Dagbani place features: Implications for markedness. Legon Journal of the Humanities 29(2). 197–240. https://doi.org/10.4314/ljh.v29i2.8.Search in Google Scholar

Hyman, Larry. 1993. Structure preservation and postlexical tonology in Dagbani. In Sharon Hargus & Ellen Kaisse (eds.), Phonetics and phonology 4: Studies in lexical phonology, 235–254. Orlando: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-325071-1.50014-5Search in Google Scholar

Hyman, Larry & Knut J. Olawsky. 2004. Dagbani verb tonology. In C. Githiora, H. Littlefield & Victor Manfredi (eds.), Trends in African linguistics 4, 97–108. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.Search in Google Scholar

Issah, Samuel Alhassan. 2011. The phonology of Dagbani verbal reduplication. Journal of West African Languages 38(1). 40–52.Search in Google Scholar

Jensen, John T. 2000. Against ambisyllabicity. Phonology 17(2). 187–235. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675700003912.Search in Google Scholar

Kahn, Daniel. 1976. Syllable-based generalisations in English phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Ladefoged, Peter. 1968. A phonetic study of West African languages: An auditory-instrumental survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

McCarthy, John. J. 2003. OT Constraints are categorical. Phonology 20(1). 75–138. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675703004470.Search in Google Scholar

Nindow, Mohammed Osman. 2017. Some syllable structure processes in Dagbani: An Optimality Theory account. Winneba: University of Education, Winneba MPhil thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Olawsky, Knut. J. 1999. Aspects of Dagbani grammar – with special emphasis on phonologyand morphology. München: LINCOM.Search in Google Scholar

Prince, Alan & Paul, Smolensky. 2004. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Malden, MA: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470759400Search in Google Scholar

Rubach, Jerzy. 1996. Shortening and ambisyllabicity in English. Phonology 13. 197–237. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675700002104.Search in Google Scholar

Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1982. The syllable. In Harry van der Hulst & Norval Smith (eds.), The structure of phonological representations, 337–383. Dordrecht: Foris.10.1515/9783112423325-010Search in Google Scholar

Tucker, Archibald N. 1940. The Eastern Sudanic languages, vol. 1. London: Dawsons.Search in Google Scholar

Whitney, William Dwight. 1889. Sanskrit grammar. London: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, William A. A. 1970. External tonal sandhi in Dagbani. African Language Studies 11. 405–416.Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2019-08-18
Revised: 2019-11-01
Revised: 2019-12-25
Accepted: 2020-02-03
Published Online: 2020-11-06
Published in Print: 2020-09-25

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 22.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/flin-2020-2039/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button