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A nonlinear analysis of vowel harmony in Luganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Francis Katamba
Francis Katamba
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, University of Lancaster
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Extract

In some languages, vowels occurring in some specified domain, which is usually the word, must share some phonetic property or properties. Such languages are said to have vowel harmony.

Luganda, a Bantu language of Uganda, is unusual in having a vowel harmony system which is entirely morphologically conditioned. There is one subsystem which operates in the noun phrase and another irregular subsystem which operates in the verb phrase. The aim of this paper is to show how the non-linear theory of phonology developed by writers like Clements (1980, 1982) can throw some light on this apparently irregularity-ridden system.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , September 1984 , pp. 257 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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