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Phonological phrasing and ATR vowel harmony in Akan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2015

Frank Kügler
Frank Kügler*
Affiliation:
University of Potsdam
*
E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

This paper examines phonological phrasing in the Kwa language Akan. Regressive [+ATR] vowel harmony between words (RVH) serves as a hitherto unreported diagnostic of phonological phrasing. In this paper I discuss VP-internal and NP-internal structures, as well as SVO(O) and serial verb constructions. RVH is a general process in Akan grammar, although it is blocked in certain contexts. The analysis of phonological phrasing relies on universal syntax–phonology mapping constraints whereby lexically headed syntactic phrases are mapped onto phonological phrases. Blocking contexts call for a domain-sensitive analysis of RVH assuming recursive prosodic structure which makes reference to maximal and non-maximal phonological phrases. It is proposed (i) that phonological phrase structure is isomorphic to syntactic structure in Akan, and (ii) that the process of RVH is blocked at the edge of a maximal phonological phrase; this is formulated in terms of a domain-sensitive CrispEdge constraint.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 177 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The valuable help of Kofi Dorvlo and Charles Marfo during a fieldwork visit in 2012 is greatly acknowledged. Many thanks to Monica Amoah Appenteng and Reginald Duah for sharing their native speaker intuitions with me. Parts of this paper were presented at the ‘Syntax–phonology interface from a cross-linguistic perspective’ workshop at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin in 2012, and at colloquium series at Frankfurt am Main (2012), Stuttgart (2013), Potsdam (2014) and ZAS (2014). Comments from participants were greatly appreciated. For useful discussion, I would like to thank Ingo Feldhausen, Caroline Féry, Susanne Genzel, Shin Ishihara, Fabian Schubö and Sabine Zerbian. In particular, I sincerely thank the editors of this thematic issue, Lisa Selkirk and Seunghun Lee, for their invaluable support and discussion on earlier versions of this paper. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant SFB 632 ‘Information structure’; project D5).

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