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Featural foot in Bambara

  • Valentin Vydrin EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: January 20, 2021

Abstract

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 in Bambara

“Kansen” (pied phonétique) ye mankankalan kelenmafɛn (unité phonétique) dɔ ye min bɛ se ka kanɲɛ (syllabe) fila walima kanɲɛ kelen jason. Danɲɛ kelen bɛ se ka kansen kelen walima kansen fila jason, fo ka tɛmɛ o kan. Kumaden (morphème) kelen bɛ se ka kansen kelen walima kansen fila jason, nka kansen kelen tɛ se ka tɛmɛ kumaden kelen kan. Misali dɔw filɛ: kansen fila bɛ fùnténí na (fùn|téní); nàmàsá fana bɛ ten (nàmà|sá). Walasa ka daɲɛ tila-tila kansenw ye, lahalaya damadɔw bɛ labato, ni o ye: dafata min bɛ kansen daminɛ, o suguya; dafata min bɛ kansen cɛmancɛ la, o suguya; dafalenw sigicogow. Daɲɛ tila-tilacogoya kansenw ye, o nɔ bɛ se ka ye kanhakɛ fɛnsɛncogo la. Kansen min ye kanɲɛ ye, o suguya fila bɛ yen: kansen girinman ani kansen fɛgɛnman. Ni kansen girinman don, a dafalen fɔlɔ samalen don; ni kansen fɛgɛnman don, a dafalen fɔlɔ samalen tɛ, a bɛ se ka bin yɛrɛ. Mankandɔnnikɛla wɛrɛw ye dɔ sɛbɛn bamanankan kansenko kan ka ban. U miirinataw fana sɛgɛsɛgɛlen bɛ nin masalabolo in kɔnɔ.


Corresponding author: Valentin Vydrin, Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Grant 20-18-00250 ‘Tonal languages of the world: online data base and atlas’. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the very useful critics and remarks that have helped me to improve this paper. Thanks to Steven Kaye for checking my English, to Boubacar Diarra and Sékou Coulibaly for editing the Bambara annotation.

Abbreviations

art

tonal article

augm

augmentative suffix

intr

intransitive

neg

negation

pfv

perfective

qual

qualitative verbal marker

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Published Online: 2021-01-20
Published in Print: 2020-10-06

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