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Phrasal phonology in Copperbelt Bemba*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2015

Nancy C. Kula  and
Lee S. Bickmore
Nancy C. Kula*
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Lee S. Bickmore*
Affiliation:
University at Albany
*
E-mail: nckula@essex.ac.uk
E-mail: lbickmore@albany.edu.
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Abstract

Copperbelt Bemba exhibits several rightward spreading tonal processes which are sensitive to prosodic phrase structure. The rightmost H tone in a word will undergo unbounded spreading if the word is final in a phonological phrase (φ). In an intonational phrase consisting of several single-word φ's, the rightmost H in the first word will spread through all following toneless φ's. From a rule-based perspective, this can only be accounted for by positing mutually feeding iterative rules, as a single H-tone spreading rule cannot account for the long-distance spreading. Rather, a second rule that spreads a H from the final mora of one word onto the initial mora of the following word is required, as a bridge to further unbounded spreading. Three phrase-sensitive OT constraints are proposed to account for H-tone spreading between words. One is of the domain-juncture variety, requiring the specification of two separate prosodic domains.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 147 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The first-named author would like to acknowledge financial support from the British Academy (grant number SG102315; 2011–13). We also acknowledge fruitful discussion with audiences at Bantu 5 (INALCO, Paris), ACAL 45 and a workshop on tone at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We also thank the guest editors of this volume, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. Of course, any errors or omissions are our own.

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