Tonal interaction in Kinande : cyclicity, opacity, and morphosyntactic structure

Abstract

This dissertation develops a constraint-based analysis of opaque tonal interactions in Kinande verb forms and, based on this analysis, argues for a phonological architecture that incorporates both cyclic evaluation and constraint reranking. Evidence for cyclic evaluation comes from a close correspondence between process ordering and phonological domain structure: in order for one process to follow another, and thereby render it opaque, it must apply within a larger domain. Evidence for constraint reranking is found in the fact that some processes that interact serially through cyclic evaluation are governed by incompatible constraint hierarchies. The dissertation also presents a new analysis of bounded leftward tone shift as the expansion of an underlying/intermediate falling tone. This analysis connects the seemingly unmotivated shift of H tones in phrase-internal position to the transparently motivated shift of H tones in utterance-final position, where H tones move left in order to avoid tonal crowding. Empirical evidence for this analysis is found in the language's unusual distribution of active L tones: these systematically follow shifted H tones, just as would be expected if their presence were the cause of leftward movement. Finally, the dissertation argues for a new morphological analysis of finite verb forms in Kinande, based upon a close examination of their tone patterns. According to this analysis, many verbal elements that have been previously identified as inflectional prefixes are analyzed either as components of phonologically reduced verb phrases or as auxiliary verb stems.-Crucially, the latter are inflected just like main stems, showing that Kinande allows multiple inflected stems to co-exist within a single verb.