Phonotactic c(l)ues to Bantu noun class disambiguation
-
Aaron Braver
Abstract
While a number of phonologists assume that phonotactics can provide clues to abstract morphological information, this possibility has largely gone unconsidered in work on Bantu noun classes. We present experimental evidence from isiXhosa (a Bantu language of the Nguni family, from South Africa), showing that speakers make use of root phonotactics when assigning noun classes to nonce words. Nouns in Xhosa bear class-indicating prefixes, but some of these prefixes are homophonous – and therefore ambiguous. Our findings show that when speakers are presented with words that have prefixes ambiguous between two classes, phonotactic factors can condition them to treat the nouns as one class or the other. This suggests that noun class (and other abstract morphological information) is not only stored in the lexicon, but is also redundantly indicated by phonotactic clues.
Funding statement: Funding: This work was supported by a grant from the Rhodes University Research Council.
Acknowledgments
We owe thanks first and foremost to all of our experiment participants. We also thank Msindisi Sam and Danica Kreusch for invaluable assistance in preparing and conducting the experiment. For assistance collecting the data, we thank Kelly Goldstuck, and Olona Tywabi. For helpful feedback and discussion, we thank Jochen Zeller, Seunghun Lee, Maxwell Kadenge, Lionel Posthumus, Stephan Schulz, Mark de Vos, Blake Allen, Claire Moore-Cantwell, and Hannah Sande. Authors’ names are in reverse alphabetical order.
References
Aronoff, Mark. 1992. Noun classes in Arapesh. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1991, 21–32. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-011-2516-1_3Suche in Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself: Stems and inflectional classes, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 22. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Baumbach, E. J. M. 1987. Analytical Tsonga grammar. Pretoria: University of South Africa.Suche in Google Scholar
Bennett, Wm. G. 2014. Some differences between clicks and Labio-Velars. South African Journal of African Languages 34(2). 115–126.10.1080/02572117.2014.997045Suche in Google Scholar
Berko, J. 1958. The child’s learning of English morphology. Word 14. 150–177.10.1080/00437956.1958.11659661Suche in Google Scholar
Cole, D. T. 1955. Introduction to Tswana grammar. Cape Town: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville G. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139166119Suche in Google Scholar
Doke, C. M. 1927. Textbook of Zulu grammar. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman. (reprinted 1984, 6th edition).Suche in Google Scholar
Doke, C. M. 1954. The Southern Bantu Languages. London: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Ernestus, Mirjam & Harald Baayen. 2003. Predicting the unpredictable: Interpreting neutralized segments in Dutch. Language 79(1). 5–38.10.1353/lan.2003.0076Suche in Google Scholar
Fortune, G. 1984. Shona grammatical constructions, vol. 1, 3rd edn. Harare: Mercury Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Gelbart, Ben. 2005. Perception of foreignness. University of Massachusetts PhD thesis, Amherst.Suche in Google Scholar
Halpert, Claire. 2012. Overlap-driven consequences of nasal place assimilation. In Philip Hoole, Lasse Bombien, Marianne Pouplier, Christine Mooshammer & Barbara Küuhnert (eds.), Consonant clusters and structural complexity, 345–368. Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9781614510772.345Suche in Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce, Kie Zuraw, Péter Siptár & Zsuzsa Londe. 2009. Natural and unnatural constraints in Hungarian vowel harmony. Language 85(4). 822–863.10.1353/lan.0.0169Suche in Google Scholar
Idiata, D. F. 2005. What Bantu child speech data tells us about the controversial semantics of Bantu Noun class system. Lincom.Suche in Google Scholar
Iosad, Pavel. 2010. Right at the left edge: Initial consonant mutations in the languages of the world. In J. Wohlgemuth & M. Cysouw (eds.), Rethinking universals: How rarities affect linguistic theory, 105–138. Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110220933.105Suche in Google Scholar
Jessen, Michael & Justus C. Roux. 2002. Voice quality differences associated with stops and clicks in Xhosa. Journal of Phonetics 30. 1–52.10.1006/jpho.2001.0150Suche in Google Scholar
Jordan, A. C. 1966. A practical course in Xhosa. Cape Town: Longmans.Suche in Google Scholar
Katamba, F. 2003. Bantu nominal morphology. In Derek Nurse & Geraldine Philippson (eds.), The Bantu languages, 103–120. Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Kgolo, Naledi. 2014. The mental representation of Setswana Deverbative nouns: A psycholinguistic analysis of Class 1 and 9 nominalisations. University of Essex, PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Kgolo, Naledi & Sonja Eisenbeiss. 2015. The role of morphological structure in the processing of complex forms: Evidence from Setswana deverbative nouns. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 30(9). 1116–1133.10.1080/23273798.2015.1053813Suche in Google Scholar
Kunju, Hleze. Forthcoming. IsiXhosa as a minority language in Zimbabwe. Rhodes University PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons & Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2016. Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 19th edn. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Online version, entry for Xhosa: http://www.ethnologue.com/language/xho (accessed 19 May 2016).Suche in Google Scholar
Mclaren, J. 1942. A Xhosa grammar, 2nd edn. Cape Town: Longmans, Green, and Co.Suche in Google Scholar
Moore-Cantwell, Claire. 2016. The phonological grammar is probabilistic: New evidence pitting abstract representation against analogy. Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting in Phonology.Suche in Google Scholar
Moreton, E. & S. Amano. 1999. Phonotactics in the perception of Japanese vowel length: Evidence for long-distance dependencies. Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology.10.21437/Eurospeech.1999-592Suche in Google Scholar
Pahl, H. W. 1978. IsiXhosa. Halfway House, South Africa: Educum.Suche in Google Scholar
Sande, Hannah. 2016. An interface model of phonologically determined agreement. In Kyeong-min Kim et al. (ed.), Proceedings of the 33rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 339–350. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Suche in Google Scholar
Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 2010. The nanosyntax of Nguni noun class prefixes and concords. Lingua 120(6). 1522–1548.10.1016/j.lingua.2009.10.004Suche in Google Scholar
Tshabe, S. L. et al. (eds.). 2006. The Greater Dictionary of IsiXhosa, vols 1–3, previously published in 1989, 2003. IsiXhosa National Lexicography Unit. Alice, South Africa: University of Fort Hare.Suche in Google Scholar
Tucker, G. R., W. E. Lambert & A. A. Rigault. 1977. The French speaker’s skill with grammatical gender: An example of rule-governed behaviour. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110805413Suche in Google Scholar
© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Phonetics & Phonology
- Phonotactic c(l)ues to Bantu noun class disambiguation
- Articulatory correlates of metrical structure: Studying jaw displacement patterns
- Language Acquisition & Language Learning
- Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors
- Historical Linguistics
- Tangut, Gyalrongic, Kiranti and the nature of person indexation in Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan
- Usage-based perspectives on diachronic morphology: A mixed-methods approach towards English ing-nominals
- Morphology & Syntax
- What we talk about when we talk about biolinguistics
- Structure vs. use in heritage language
- Sociolinguistics & Anthropological Linguistics
- An evaluation of noise on LPC-based vowel formant estimates: Implications for sociolinguistic data collection
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Fluid construction grammar as a biological system
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Phonetics & Phonology
- Phonotactic c(l)ues to Bantu noun class disambiguation
- Articulatory correlates of metrical structure: Studying jaw displacement patterns
- Language Acquisition & Language Learning
- Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors
- Historical Linguistics
- Tangut, Gyalrongic, Kiranti and the nature of person indexation in Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan
- Usage-based perspectives on diachronic morphology: A mixed-methods approach towards English ing-nominals
- Morphology & Syntax
- What we talk about when we talk about biolinguistics
- Structure vs. use in heritage language
- Sociolinguistics & Anthropological Linguistics
- An evaluation of noise on LPC-based vowel formant estimates: Implications for sociolinguistic data collection
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Fluid construction grammar as a biological system
