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The Diachronic Emergence of Post-Nasal Retroflexion in Somali Bantu Kizigua: Internal Motivation or Contact-Induced Change?

Tse, Holman (2013) The Diachronic Emergence of Post-Nasal Retroflexion in Somali Bantu Kizigua: Internal Motivation or Contact-Induced Change? In: Joint Meeting of the Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) and the Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL), 10 March 2013 - 10 March 2013, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

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Abstract

Somali Bantu Kizigua is an under-described and possibly endangered dialect of the Tanzanian language Zigula. One feature that distinguishes this dialect from Tanzanian dialects is the presence of retroflexion in pre-nasalized stops. In this paper, I will discuss how this retroflexion can be accounted for as an internally motivated sound change. The specific set of sound changes I will discuss are as follows, with some inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation in (1): (1) nt > nʈ > ʈ (2) nd > nɖ The data for this study includes both diachronic and synchronic evidence. The diachronic data comes from historic sources including late 19th century and early 20th century missionary-produced publications (Kisbey 1897, 1906) that describe varieties of Zigula spoken in Tanzania during this time period. The synchronic data comes from word list recordings made of 4 speakers (3 male and 1 female) between the ages of 21 and 30. The analysis will be tied to recent research by Hamann & Fuchs (2010), which presents articulatory and acoustic data showing that the aerodynamic conditions required by voicing favor a more retracted articulation for voiced alveolar plosives leading to the following sound change in the languages surveyed: (3) d > ɖ I will argue that the acoustic and articulatory similarity between voiced plosives and pre-nasalized stops fits in with (3) above and discuss how Hamann & Fuchs (2010) can also account for (1), which does not occur in any of the languages discussed in their study.

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Details

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Tse, Holmanhbt3@pitt.eduHBT30000-0002-2398-5776
Date: 10 March 2013
Date Type: Publication
Access Restriction: No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately.
Event Title: Joint Meeting of the Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) and the Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL)
Event Dates: 10 March 2013 - 10 March 2013
Event Type: Conference
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Schools and Programs: Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Linguistics
Refereed: Yes
Official URL: https://gurt.georgetown.edu/2013
Date Deposited: 08 Sep 2015 14:15
Last Modified: 18 Jun 2019 05:55
URI: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/26116

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