TY - JOUR

T1 - Vowel elision and reduction in Bambara

AU - Vydrin, Valentin

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - The goal of this study is to test instrumentally the hypothesis that Bambara disyllabic feet are distributed into three types. The results of the study can be summarised as follows: – reduction and elision of a short V1 in disyllabic feet is phonetic, rather than phonological, and can be explained by phonotactics. Therefore, disyllabic feet with a short first vowel form just one type; – V1 length, although phonologically relevant, displays some instability between speakers; – in a disyllabic foot (at least when its boundaries coincide with word boundaries), length characteristics are in complementary distribution: if the first vowel is short, the second is long, and if the first vowel is long, the second is short. This phenomenon can be defined as ‘foot isochrony’; – if the first vowel of a disyllabic foot is short, the duration of the second vowel depends on the position of the foot within the word: word-finally it is long, otherwise it is short; – the difference between disyllabic feet types in Bambara can be exhaustively described by means of the length of the first vowel; there seems to be no need to postulate the existence of stress.

AB - The goal of this study is to test instrumentally the hypothesis that Bambara disyllabic feet are distributed into three types. The results of the study can be summarised as follows: – reduction and elision of a short V1 in disyllabic feet is phonetic, rather than phonological, and can be explained by phonotactics. Therefore, disyllabic feet with a short first vowel form just one type; – V1 length, although phonologically relevant, displays some instability between speakers; – in a disyllabic foot (at least when its boundaries coincide with word boundaries), length characteristics are in complementary distribution: if the first vowel is short, the second is long, and if the first vowel is long, the second is short. This phenomenon can be defined as ‘foot isochrony’; – if the first vowel of a disyllabic foot is short, the duration of the second vowel depends on the position of the foot within the word: word-finally it is long, otherwise it is short; – the difference between disyllabic feet types in Bambara can be exhaustively described by means of the length of the first vowel; there seems to be no need to postulate the existence of stress.

KW - vowel elision

KW - featural foot

KW - syllable weight

KW - Bambara

UR - http://www.italian-journal-linguistics.com/wp-content/uploads/6_Vydrin.pdf

UR - https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02983191

M3 - Article

VL - 32

SP - 103

EP - 124

JO - Italian Journal of Linguistics

JF - Italian Journal of Linguistics

SN - 1120-2726

IS - 1

ER -