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On Retaining Vowel Colour in Derived Roots: Blocked Imbrication in Bemba∗

Nancy C. Kula

1. Introduction This paper revisits an old issue in Bantu phonology, namely imbrication. Bastin’s (1983) seminal work provides a cross-Bantu description of imbrication describing it as a process by which the vowel of the perfective suffix (PB *-ide) fuses with the final vowel of a verbal base. The focus of this paper is however not on elaborating on possible analyses of this process (for which abundant literature is available; see among others Givón 1970, Mould 1972, de Blois 1975, Kisseberth & Abasheik 1974, Bastin 1983, Hyman 1995, Ngunga 1998, Kula 2002) but rather on seeking an explanation for cases of underapplication opacity where the process fails to takes place even though its conditions are met. This arises in cases where the creation of a target verbal base involves a change in the root vowel, i.e. cases where bases are created from sub-minimal CV roots.1 These verbal bases, as well as those that are characterised as expansions in Meeussen’s (1967) terminology show disparities in the application of imbrication that can only be explained by more articulated representations of vowel structure. The blocking of imbrication in these bases is thus intimately related to vowel fusion and particularly to how this pertains to the root vowel. The paper is organised as follows:

§2 gives a brief discussion of the regular application of imbrication and a characterisation of the process as it holds in Bemba; §3 provides an overview of vowel fusion in Bemba in general, setting the foundation for following discussion; §4 looks at CV roots showing how they illustrate a blocking effect on the application of imbrication; §5 investigates ‘derived roots’ or expansions and discusses their similarity to CV roots in blocking imbrication and offers a representationally based analysis involving privative feature organisations that are motivated by the need to preserve root vowel information here dubbed ‘vowel colour’;

∗ This paper is based on revisions of parts of chapter 5 of Kula (2002). I thank the audience at the 3rd Conference of Bantu Languages in Tervuren, Belgium (March 2009) for discussion. 1 I take as standard the structure of the verb stem as established in Meeussen (1967): [[[Root] suffixn]VerbalBase - FV]VerbStem. I also take the canonical root shape to be CVC-. 2 As described in Bastin (1983) this seems to be the general pattern although there is evidence that some languages have innovated the process with imbrication also seemingly occurring in roots. See, for example, Mould (1972) for Rundi and Devos (2004) for Makwe. 3 Bemba has five vowels (a ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ) with vowel harmony that changes the shape of the perfective suffix occurring with mid-vowels. There is also a process of nasal harmony that affects the suffix 1 I take as standard the structure of the verb stem as established in Meeussen (1967): [[[Root] suffixn]VerbalBase - FV]VerbStem. I also take the canonical root shape to be CVC-.

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§6 evaluates the interaction of imbrication with the passive, providing support for the particular glide representation argued for in the paper; and §7 offers some concluding remarks.

2. Contrast between Roots and Bases Bemba is an example of a Bantu language where imbrication typically affects verb roots to the exclusion of bases.2 The form of the perfective suffix is -ile and as illustrated in the examples below no imbrication takes place when roots are involved.3 The interpretation of the perfective form is ‘have/had x’. (1) CVC root + -ile Perfective form a. tin- ‘squeeze’ tin-ine b. tul- ‘pierce’ tul-ile c. pet- ‘fold’ pet-ele d. pal- ‘resemble’ pal-ile e. pol- ‘recover’ pol-ele By contrast, when a verbal base is involved imbrication must apply. This is illustrated in the examples below where the starred forms without imbrication are ungrammatical. Imbrication fuses the base-final vowel with the -i- of the perfective suffix to give perfective forms with a pre-final lengthened vowel. (2) base (root+appl./recip.) + ile Perfective form a. tin-in- ‘squeeze for’ tin-iine *tin-in-ine b. tul-il- ‘pierce for’ tul-iile *tul-il-ile c. pet-an- ‘folded through e.o.’ pet-eene *pet-an-ine d. pal-an- ‘resemble each other’ pal-eene *pal-an-ine e. pol-el- ‘recover for’ pol-eele *pol-el-ele The characteristics of imbrication can thus be summed up as follows: • Imbrication is a property of bases that involves at least three processes, i.e.

a) vowel fusion and/or gliding, triggered by the perfect suffix vowel /i/ when it comes into contact with the vowel preceding the base-final consonant; b) loss of segmental content within the perfect suffix; the suffix consonant /l/, and

2 As described in Bastin (1983) this seems to be the general pattern although there is evidence that some languages have innovated the process with imbrication also seemingly occurring in roots. See, for example, Mould (1972) for Rundi and Devos (2004) for Makwe. 3 Bemba has five vowels (a ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ) with vowel harmony that changes the shape of the perfective suffix occurring with mid-vowels. There is also a process of nasal harmony that affects the suffix consonant when the root ends in a nasal.

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c) a discontinuous realisation of the perfect suffix; the initial /i/ and the final /e/ of the suffix are separated by the base-final consonant in imbricated forms.

• Imbrication cannot be characterised as being based on some inherent property of particular verbs since non-imbricating verbs yield to the process once they are extended.

• The imbrication site is consistently before the base-final consonant.4 In order to explain the restriction of imbrication to bases, I argued in Kula (2002) for a functional/processing explanation; namely that because the root provides salient information for parsing i.e. is crucial to the interpretive identification of a morphologically complex form, a phonological process that would diminish its unique identity is avoided. The root is considered to be the head in such morphological structure that acts as the trigger rather than the undergoer of phonological processes. This avoidance, however, takes on a different form when CV roots are involved because owing to a mandatory vowel fusion process in Bemba, the vowel of a CV root always fuses with a following suffix vowel. The question is then whether the integrity of the root vowel is retained and further, whether imbrication applies in such ‘bases’. These questions will be the focus of sections 4 and 5. In order to contextualise the discussion of bases derived from CV roots, which as discussed always result in vowel fusion processes; we look at the constraints that hold on vowel fusion in Bemba in the next section. 3. Constrains on Vowel Fusion in Bemba The best environment for observing vowel interactions is between inflectional prefixes because many tense and aspect markers consist only of vowels. Their interactions reveal that vowel hiatus is not permissible between short vowels in Bemba. The only instances of sequences of vowels found are between a long and a short vowel. Short vowel sequences result in fusion or coalescence that may also involve gliding. Kashoki (1968) provides the following description of possible fusion outputs between the five vowels of Bemba.

4 This characteristic has prompted analyses where the final consonant of the base is said to undergo circumscription in the derivation of the perfective (Hyman 1995). Under circumscription of the base-final consonant the vowel of the base and the perfective suffix can come in contact resulting in the observed fusion process.

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(3) Vowel fusion in Bemba (Kashoki 1968: 25)

i e a o u i ii yee yaa yoo yuu e ee ee yaa yoo yoo a ee ee aa oo oo o wee wee waa oo oo u wii wee waa oo uu

Vowels in the first column are the first member in the fusion process while those in the first row are the second. Let us begin by first looking at the corner vowels /a, i, u/. According to the table above, when /i/ is the first vowel there is no fusion but gliding of the high front vowel and lengthening of the second vowel. The only exception to this is, of course, if it is adjacent to another /i/, in which case a long vowel results. A parallel can be drawn with /u/, which also, as a first member does not result in fusion but gliding of /u/ and lengthening of the second vowel although note that with the back mid-vowel only long /o/ is seen. By contrast, when /i/ and /u/ are the second members in a fusion process, some fusion is attested; consider particularly /a+i; o+i/ and /a+u; e+u/. The low vowel /a/ also shows this disparity of fusion or not depending on its position in the sequence; fusion occurs when /a/ is the first member but not when it is the second member. Vowel fusions as illustrated by the high vowels as second members and the low vowel as first member provide evidence for the assumption that segments consist of internal features that can be manipulated; it is the interaction of such features that results in a new output mid vowel when /a/ and /u/ are combined, for example. There are various positions that may be taken on what these features are and whether they have binary oppositions or not. I take the position that they are monovalent features and further that they can be independently interpretable as assumed, for example, in Government Phonology (Kaye et al. 1985, Harris & Lindsey 1995), which I broadly assume in this paper. The elements |A| |I| and |U| are used to represent vowels in Government Phonology with their independent interpretations being [a], [i] and [u], respectively. Given these elements vowel representations can consist of either simplex or complex representations involving more than one element. Vowel fusion can in this sense be regarded as the fusion of the elements of which the vowels are composed. As with any phonological process there can be constraints that hold on the combinability of elements. Such constraints (technically referred to as Licensing Constraints) in fact define the segmental inventory of a language. There are as such constraints that hold on the combinability of the three vocalic elements in Bemba to ensure that only the five vowels of the language surface. In addition to this there are also general phonological constraints on the two main

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mechanisms (spreading and delinking/composition and decomposition) that drive phonological processes in GP accounting for the fact that phonological processes are constrained with respect to their domain of application. The cross-linguistic distribution of phonological processes provides evidence for the existence of such constraints. Consider, for example, that vowel harmony is seen to cross-linguistically involve different domains depending on the language involved; lenition and neutralisation processes also differ with respect to their areas of application; or the common processes of assimilation that differ in directionality across different languages. In the data of vowel fusion in Bemba just discussed we see that such a process constraint is at play in the directionality of fusion where only particular sequences of vowels result in vowel fusion i.e. |A| must be part of the first vowel for fusion to take place. We can capture this with the process constraint: ‘|A| spreads’. This constraint implies that when |A| is part of the vowels involved in a hiatus situation then it will spread from either the first or the second vowel position; there are no restrictions on the spread of |A|. In contrast to this |I| and |U| do not spread. This only leaves us with one issue to explain, namely, the contrast in fusion between the hiatus situations /i - a/ and /a - i/, for example, where the former results in total fusion producing /e:/ but the latter results in gliding producing /ya:/. In terms of element structure they are identical and as we have discussed |A| spreads in each case. It is clear that unlike complex vowels like the mid front vowel /e/ containing the elements |A| and |I| the fusion situation involves more complex constituent structure in that the two vowels are in different nuclear positions; hence |A| is spread over two positions. Assuming that structures strictly alternate between consonantal and vocalic positions (Kula 2002, Scheer 2004) then the two merging vowels are separated by an onset. The only way of ensuring fusion is to have the vowels in some kind of relation that binds them together, i.e. a governing relation. A characteristic of a government relation that is crucial to the representation of fusion is that it is an asymmetrical relation that holds between two positions. Asymmetrical in that one position is more dominant than the other or in other words is the head of the relation. In the hiatus situation under discussion the vocalic position to the right is head. I will assume here that this implies that the head of the resulting combination of elements after vowel fusion must also be in the head position. Thus, whenever |I| is the second member in a hiatus situation it can be head of the resulting combination of elements. Similarly, when |A| is on the right it will be head but it cannot be head of other elements in complex vowels following general well-formedness constraints of the theory. It is not permissible to have the same elemental combinations with only a difference in headedness representing the same vowel i.e. a combination of |A| and |I| where either

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element is head but both are interpreted as /e/ in the same language is barred.5 Let us consider some examples and their representations below.6

5 We could also consider that the complex representations of the mid-vowels in Bemba have |A| as head, namely |U.A| and |I.A| for /o/ and /e/ respectively (head on the right) but independently developed Licensing Constraints for Bemba vowels (Kula 2002) based on processes such as vowel harmony show that |I| and |U| are head in complex expressions. Bemba LCs (Kula 2002: 48): (i) I must be head; (ii) U must be head; and the fusion cases here also show that the LC ‘Phonological expressions must be headed’ also plays a role since long /a/ is |A| headed. 6 The following abbreviations are used in morphological glossing: SM=subject marker; HAB=habitual aspect; FV=verb final vowel; PRES=present tense; NCP=noun class prefix; DEM=demonstrative; FUT=future tense; PROG= progressive aspect.

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(4) a. /a + i e:/ b. /i + a ya:/ a-la-ib-a aleeba a-li-afy-a alyaafya SM1-HAB-steal-FV SM-PRES-difficult-FV ‘He steals in general.’ ‘He is a difficult.’ government O N1O N2O N3 O1N1O2N2O3N3

| | | | | | | | | | | | x x x x x x x x x x x x | | | | | | | l a i b a - l i a fy a A I I A In (4) we see the two contrasting cases of fusion with the sequence /a - i/ and /i - a/. In terms of interpretation, the element in the head position is spread and shared over the two positions with the difference between the two representations being that in (4a) sharing |A| over the two positions results in a combination of |A.I| where |I| is head and the mid-vowel /e/ results. In (4b), on the other hand, |A| is spread and interpreted over the two positions but it must also be head in the resulting expression meaning that |I| cannot be interpreted as part of the expression. The independent interpretation of |I| from the rest of the expression is phonetically realised as a glide. Notice that in terms of representation the element |I| does not leave the representation but is part of a complex heavy diphthong structure over the two nuclear positions.7 Let us now consider the slightly more complex situation involving complex vowels in the hiatus situation and the resulting partial fusion.8 These cases are instructive in demonstrating that complex vowels are indeed composed of combinations of elements because the elements can be seen to undergo decomposition and be interpreted independently. In the cases illustrated below, (5a) shows the decomposition of /e/ |A.I| where |I| is interpreted separately from the rest of the expression in the resulting heavy diphthong structure. (5b) shows the decomposition of /o/ |A.U| with |U| being interpreted independently. Both examples show that the constraint ‘|A| spreads’ captures the generalisation that |A| spreads unambiguously; from both simplex and complex expressions.

7 In these derived long vowel structures an onset intervenes between the two nuclear positions. It is licensed to remain uninterpreted by the flanking government relation that holds between the two nuclei. 8 The data used here are not verbal forms because there are no prefixes that end in /o/ or in a short /e/. The point with respect to fusion that is being made here is still valid.

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(5) a. /e + o yo:/ b. /o + i we:/ Puule oba Puulyooba itʃi-kopo itʃi itʃikopweetʃi Proper name row-imperative NCP-tin NCPdem

‘Puule row!’ ‘this pot’ government O1N1O2N2O3N3 O1N1O2N2O3N3 | | | | | | | | | | | | x x x x x x x x x x x x | | | | | | | | | | ....l e o b a ...p o i c i AA A I U U I The representation in (5a) shows that |A| can spread from either direction since both vowels contain |A| and we know that some element sharing has applied because the resulting vowel, though still the mid-back vowel, is now long. Since |U| is in the head position N2 on the right it must be the head of the expression. Since |I| also aims to be head in complex expressions it cannot be interpreted with the rest of the expression and is thus realized as a glide. Similarly in (5b) |A| spreads rightwards into |I| which must be the head of the resulting expression with |U| seeking independent interpretation. I return to the representation of vowels presently. Let us consider for completeness the one case where no fusion is seen in cases of adjacent vowels. These are cases involving a (lexical) long and a short vowel. We can demonstrate this with the progressive aspect marker -laa. In contrast to (4a) above, long /a/ + /i/ results in no fusion as illustrated below. (6) /aa + i aa + i/

a-ka-laa-ib-a a-ka-laa-iba (*a-ka-lee-b-a/*a-ka-laa-yib-a) SM-FUT -PROG-steal-FV

‘He will be stealing.’ government

O1N1O2N2O3N3O4N4 | | | | | | | x x x x x x x | | | |

- l a- i b a As can be seen in (6) the order of the vowels (and elements) in N2 and N3 with respect to vowel fusion is satisfied but |A| element sharing fails to take place because N2 is already in a governing relation with N1. Simultaneous government

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relations as would result here between N1 and N2 and between N2 and N3 are not licit in GP because this would require N2 to simultaneously be head (of the initial governing relation) and dependent (of the final governing relation).9 Thus the lack of fusion here is attributed to the structural conditions rather than incompatibility of elements. We can therefore overall characterise vowel fusion in Bemba as involving the process constraint ‘|A| spreads’ with the output vowels subject to constraints on what element can be head in a particular expression. Let us briefly elaborate on the vowel representations of the outputs of fusion. The motivation for this is the interaction of the complex vowels, which revealed the idea that elements within complex expressions are able to engage in independent interaction or can be independently interpreted. This seems to reveal internal structure to the elements. Following ideas presented in Kula (2008) I assume that elements within complex expressions engage in head-dependency relations that may involve two kinds of structure; a dominance dependency relation and a branching dependency relation adapted from Botma (2004). For the current discussion when |I| and |U| are in a branching dependency relation, i.e. not part of the core representation of elemental structure, they are interpreted as glides and when they are in a dominance dependency relation they are interpreted as one with the dependent and in this case produce one vowel. Consider the representations of the fusions we have already discussed below. (7) dependency relations in vowel representations dominance dependency branching dependency (b-c) a. a + i e: b. i + a ya: I | A I A c. e + o yo: d. o + i we: I U U A | | A I 9 There is a difference in empty onset representations between O3 and O2. O3 has a skeletal position because it is licensed by N3 and must also therefore remain unrealized. O2 does not have a skeletal position because it is licensed by a governing relation, which note, is defined at the lexical level since this is a lexical long vowel. There is no possibility of the initial vowel of the verb gliding into O3 because the position is licensed to be empty but also mainly because a glide, as discussed, remains part of the nuclear representation thus *a-ka-laa-yiba is ungrammatical. See Chitoran and Nevins (2008) for a survey on glide representations.

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Such structures within elemental representations, akin to feature geometries, allow otherwise identical elements to be configured differently and thus result in different interpretations with the possibility of independent interpretations for elements in a branching dependency. With this clear picture of the constraints holding on vowel fusion in Bemba as well as the complexities in vocalic representations involved, let us now consider imbrication in CV roots which inevitably involves fusion with following suffix vowels. 4. Vowel Colours and Asymmetrical Opacity in CV Roots There are about fifteen CV verb roots in Bemba cited below. The stem of CV roots, i.e. after addition of the FV, is also CV shaped. This raises the question of whether the root should be considered as only consisting of the consonant in the CV output stem. However, perhaps apart from the verb forms in (8a-d), it is clear that CV stems involve two positions in the root from which gliding follows when the FV is added. In (8a-d), we assume vowel loss or shortening in the final output form shown in square brackets since long vowels cannot be final in Bemba. As expected with roots, there is no imbrication in the formation of the perfective as the examples below attest.10 (8) CV- root + -ile perfective

a. cá-a [c′-a] ‘dawn’ céel-e ‘has dawned’ b. pá-a [p′-a] ‘give’ péel-e ‘has given’ c. bá-a [b′-a] ‘be’ ____ d. ʃá-a [ʃ′-a] ‘leave’ ʃéel-e ‘has remained’ e. lí-a [ly′-a] ‘eat’ líil-e ‘has eaten’ f. pí-a [py′-a] ‘burn’ píil-e ‘has burnt’ g. ni-a [ny-a] ‘defecate’ nyeel-e ‘has defecated’ h. i-a [y-a] ‘go’ iil-e ‘has gone’

i. tú-a [tw′-a] ‘pound’ twíil-e ‘has pounded’ j. sú-a [sw′-a] ‘pluck’ swíil-e ‘has plucked’ k. nú-a [nw′-a] ‘drink’ nwiin-e/nwéen-e ‘has drunk’ l. lu-a [lw-a] ‘fight’ lwiil-e ‘has fought’ m.pú-a [pw′-a] ‘finish’ pwíil-e ‘has finished’ n. fú-a [fw′-a] ‘die’ fwíil-e ‘has died’

10 The verb be in (8c) does not form a perfective form with -ile and there is no suppletive form. The perfective of be is expressed by a combination of different tense signs. In (8k), the reconstructed root for drink is *nó- (cf. Meeussen 1967). This would account for the variant nween-e in the perfective, while nwiin-e could be considered a result of analogy to CV roots containing /u/ since there are no CV roots with mid-vowels. There is a vowel alternation going on in the forms in (8d&8h) which might have to do with animacy or agency that I am yet to fully understand: ninshi i-shiile ‘What has left x behind?’ vs. ninshi i-sheele ‘What has been left behind/has remained?’. Also ninshi iile ‘What has gone’ vs. naani eele ‘Who has gone?’.

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o. u-a [w-a] ‘fall’ wíil-e ‘has fallen’

These examples, which show fusion with the root vowel, are interesting for our discussion of whether the integrity of the root vowel is preserved. The examples in (8a-h) support this hypothesis as long as we conceive of preservation as retaining the root vowel features even though other features may also be added. This is where the metaphor of colour becomes useful. Consider, as already suggested that phonological segments such as vowels are made up of privative phonological primes and that there are essentially two kinds of structure; simplex and complex structures. In simplex vowel structures vowels contain only one such privative prime but in complex vowel structures vowels contain more than one privative prime. In these cases the identity of the vowel is a combination of the primes that are involved. If we were to assign the vowel primes |A| and |I| (which are otherwise defined acoustically as low and high, respectively) colours such that |A| is white and |I| is black then a combination of |A| and |I| would give us something in between like grey. What this means is that while grey is an independent colour in its own right we know that it contains a bit of white and a bit of black (how much can be regulated by assigning one of these primes the head of the representation in which case it would contribute more of its colour). Under this colour metaphor, we can say the CV roots involving vowel fusion in examples (8a-h) do not lose the vowel colour of the root in perfective forms because it is contained in the output vowel. The hypothesis then holds for these examples. The forms in (8i-o) present more of a challenge and require us to elaborate on the representations that are assumed for the phonological primes contained in the vowel segments. There are on the face of it three possible structures one can assume for the representation of the consonant-glide (CG) clusters seen in these examples. They could be treated as part of a branching onset (probably the least preferred option); they could be treated as part of a complex segment, i.e. a secondary articulation on the initial C (the traditional approach) or the glide may be treated as part of the nucleus as a light diphthong (the position adopted here). Compare the three structures in (9) for the verb twa ‘pound’. (9) a. O N b. O N c. O N x x x x x x x t w a t w a t u a A branching onset structure is least preferred because it fails to adhere to any co-occurrence restrictions. In languages like English, where genuine branching onsets are allowed, there are constraints that hold on such structures such that while /bl, gl/ are allowed /dl/ is not. No restrictions hold for CG clusters in

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Bemba where any C and G may combine. We also could not explain why other branching onset clusters like /pl, kl/ do not occur if CG clusters are true branching onsets. The structure in (9b) as a complex segment would better account for the distributional facts but involves resyllabification of /u/ from a nuclear position to an onset position. This should be dispreferred by any phonological theory that tries to be sufficiently restrictive. The only two processes allowed in Government Phonology are spreading and delinking, where the former allows a prime to be interpreted in multiple positions and the latter allows a prime to have no interpretation. In addition, the structure in (9b) also suffers from the distributional dilemma of the structure in (9a) in that CG clusters only ever occur preceding a long vowel in Bemba (the result of vowel fusion). If these were complex segments on a par with affricates we would not expect such a distributional difference. In contrast, given the structure in (9c) where the consonant and the glide are in independent constituents; we expect no restriction on what consonants may occur in an onset preceding the glide in nuclear position. This representation also makes the additional prediction that given vowel fusion in Bemba, /i-a/ and /u-a/ vowel sequences will never undergo total fusion, where total fusion is understood as an amalgamation of primes involved to produce an intermediate colour. We have already seen this prediction borne out in the fusion discussions in section 3. Thus for the current discussion, gliding as attested in the perfective form of CV roots will have the following structure where only a spreading processes takes place.11 (10) Gliding in CV- root perfective forms O N O N O N | | | | | | x x x x x x | | | | | t u i l e [twi:le] ‘has pounded’ This means that at the phonological level the root vowel remains part of the vowel structure but no total fusion of colours is possible in this case (following from language specific constraints on directionality of fusion) resulting in a phonetic form where a glide or in this case heavy diphthong is heard in the output. We can as such claim that on the phonological level the root vowels in (8i-o) remain in the nuclear position. Something worth mentioning now that

11 There are a number of details on representations in GP that we do not go into here because they are not central to the argument. For the present, suffice it to say that empty positions, like the onset in the representation in (10), are regulated by the Empty Category Principle (Kaye et al. 1990) and revisions thereof in Kula (2002). There is also more to be said about the final vowel realization where either the perfective final vowel or the verb stem final -a vowel fails to trigger its constituent structure since GP assumes that constituent structure is present at the lexical level.

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will become important as we go along is that not only must the root vowel remain present in the root but it must also be independently identified. Let us now consider the application of imbrication in verbal bases derived from CV roots. The expectation is that imbrication should apply regularly if as discussed earlier the process targets bases to the exclusion of roots. The situation is, however, a little bit more complex in that bases derived from CV roots present cases where the target vowel of imbrication is in the root vowel position. If there is a conspiracy to retain the vowel colour of the root then such sites should not be good targets of imbrication as this may result in the inability to preserve the integrity of the root vowel. It is therefore not a surprise that we find opacity effects in some bases derived from CV roots, in particular, those where the vowel /i/ is involved as seen in the data below. (11) no imbrication with /i/ initial suffixes root root+appl. VB+ perf. a. pí- píil- píil-ile *píil-e ‘has burnt for’ b. fú- fwíil- fwíil-ile *fwíil-e ‘has died for’ The starred ungrammatical forms in (11) would be the expected imbrication outputs. In terms of vowel colour, because the vowel in the root+applicative form is also /i/ (and already long) addition of /i/ from the perfective would not have any discernible effect or alternatively would totally fuse with the root vowel so that any information provided by the root vowel would no longer be independently accessible.12 We have already discussed other examples above that would attest to the fact that there is no general blocking of imbrication with high vowels but the following forms also show that this is also the case in CV roots. These examples support the idea that it is an avoidance of the root vowel rather than a block on imbrication with high vowels, for example, that best explains the examples in (11a-b). (12) imbrication with more than one /i/ initial suffix root root+caus.+appl. VB+ perf. a. lí- líish-ish- líish-iish-e *líish-ish-ile ‘make eat for’ b. pí- píish-ish- píish-iish-e *píish-ish-ile ‘gave e.o. for’ (12) shows that when another suffix is added to an already extended CV root then imbrication regularly applies because in this case it does not apply to a long /i/ vowel site.

12 Kisseberth and Abasheikh (1974) address similar facts in Mwiini by assuming an avoidance of the creation of homonyms in the morphological paradigm. In this case the lack of imbrication in (11) would be blocked by the presence of piile ‘has burnt’ as a perfective form of ‘burn’ in the system.

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A contrasting set of examples where the opacity effects seen in (11a-b) do not apply are cases where the extension in the base has a vowel other than /i/ as with the reciprocal -an-. In this case, the vowel of the CV root and the reciprocal extension do not undergo total fusion creating a base that can further undergo imbrication as illustrated in the examples below. (13) imbrication /a/ initial suffix root root+recip. VB+ perf. a. lí- lí-an- lyéen-e *lyaan-ine ‘has eaten e.o.’ b. tú- tú-an twéen-e *twaan-in-e ‘has pounded’ In this case imbrication is possible because after its application, the root vowel can still retain its integrity or indeed its colour is still perceivable in the output form. Notice, however, that there are two issues at play here with respect to the application of imbrication as has already been alluded to. While it seems that root vowel colour has an important role to play in the issue, it seems to go hand in hand with the fact that imbrication does not apply if its effects cannot be discerned. If the issue was only about the root vowel, then the form fwiila ‘die for’ in (11b) could undergo imbrication to give the form fwiile *‘has died for’ since this form with a diphthong structure would preserve the |U| colour of the vowel complex. The analysis therefore seems to more accurately lie in the following description:

(14) Imbrication in bases derived from CV roots only applies, if a) the colour of the root vowel is retained, or b) the colour of the perfective vowel is discernible in the output. An environment to test this hypothesis, before we move onto the representation of imbrication in CV roots, are verb forms that involve expansions. The term expansion refers to diachronic suffixes that have been reconstructed in Proto-Bantu but are no longer active in the synchronic language. We consider these in the next section. 5. Imbrication with Expanded CV- Roots Similar to extended CV roots, CV roots with expansions also show an asymmetric application of imbrication where only expansions containing /a/ are subject to the process. Consider the following data from Hyman (1995: 19) where high and mid vowels are opaque to the process. (15) Expanded CV roots Perfective

a. fú-ik- (fwíik-) ‘dress (trans)’ fwíik-ile fu-is- (fwiis-) ‘spit’ fwiis-ile fu-it- (fwiit-) ‘refuse a gift’ fwiit-ile

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kú-ik (kwíik-) ‘set handle on tool’ kwíik-ile ku-il- (kwiil-) ‘earn’ kwiil-ile pu-il (pwiil-) ‘sip’ pwiil-ile b. fí-uk- (fyúuk-) ‘run away’ fyúuk-ile fi-ul- (fyuul-) ‘dislocate’ fyuul-ile si-uk- (shuuk-) ‘be lucky’ shuuk-ile si-ul- (shuul-) ‘dig up, de-stump’ shuul-ile c. fo-el- (fweel-) ‘bend, droop’ fweel-ele fo-en- (fween-) ‘scratch’ fween-ene kó-el- (kwéel-) ‘climb’ kwéel-ele kó-es- (kwees-) ‘rub’ kwees-ele po-ek- (pweek-) ‘have diarrhoea’ pweek-ele pe-et- (pyeet-) ‘whimper’ pyeet-ele se-el- (sheel-) ‘drag on buttocks’ sheel-ele se-et- (sheet-) ‘chew’ sheet-ele d. be-ol- (byool-) ‘belch’ byool-ele se-ob- (shoob-) ‘reproach’ shoob-ele se-ok- (shook-) ‘take a detour’ shook-ele se-ol- (shool-) ‘crave meat’ shool-ele se-on- (shoon-) ‘run over, crush’ shoon-ene e. bi-al- (byaal-) ‘sow’ byeele fú-al- (fwáal-) ‘get dressed, wear’ fwéele fí-al- (fyáal-) ‘give birth’ fyéele fi-am- (fyaam-) ‘be wedged’ fyeeme kú-at- (kwáat-) ‘have’ kwéete lú-al (lwáal-) ‘be sick’ lwéele si-al (shaal-) ‘remain’ sheele si-am (shaam-) ‘be unlucky’ sheeme tu-al- (twaal-) ‘take something to’ tweele

The ‘expansions’ or diachronic suffixes in these stems regularly underwent vowel harmony resulting in mid long vowels in (15c-d). The fusion processes between the adjacent vowels follow the fusion patterns discussed in section 3. If these are treated in the synchronic phonology as roots then imbrication should not apply and (15a-d) would attest to this but (15e) would be a violation of this generalization. In Kula (2002) I have alluded to the idea of phonology differentiating between lexical and derived roots where the latter are like those in (15) that are derived from expansions. One phonological characteristic that makes them easily identifiable is the long root vowel usually accompanied by gliding, i.e. showing that they have a different representation for long vowels as seen in the regular fusion processes of the language. This identifying characteristic makes these ‘derived roots’ phonologically distinguishable as involving more complex structure without having in most cases counterpart

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short vowel forms in contrast to stems where length is distinctive.13 A phonological process like imbrication is then able to identify these derived roots, in contrast to lexical roots, as possible targets of imbrication. In this case (15a-d) are ruled out as possible targets because they would fail to satisfy the conditions in (14) namely; the colour of the perfective vowel /i/ would not be discernible in the output form on two counts; firstly because the relevant vowel colour is already present and secondly because the vowel is long. For the latter it means that the perfective vowel can also not enhance its presence via lengthening. We will investigate shortly by considering representations in more detail, why lengthening makes the vowel feature of the perfective discernible even when it fuses with an identical vowel. Notice that examples with long /u/ also fail to host the perfective even though condition (14a) is satisfied. This follows from independent constraints on vowel fusion that do not allow /u/ and /i/ to fuse as we have already seen in section 3. In this case, since the vowel is already long, gliding is also not an option. Let us now consider a representational analysis of blocked imbrication as has been discussed so far. We begin by considering what the set of possible derived roots from CV roots are, given that any of the five vowels of the language may occur in the root. The following illustration for expository purposes does not use concrete examples. (16)

Root -uC- suffix -iC- suffix -aC- suffix a. Ca- Cu:C Ce:C Ca:C b. Ci- Cyu:C Ci:C Cya:C c. Cu- Cu:C Cwi:C Cwa:C d. Ce- Cyo:C Ce:C Cya:C e. Co- Co:C Cwe:C Cwa:C

We can divide the possible derived roots into three groups; those that are CV:C shaped (Ca:C, Ce:C, Ci:C, Co:C, Cu:C), those that contain the glide /w/ (Cwa:C, Cwe:C, Cwi:C) and those that contain the glide /y/ (Cya:C, Cyo:C, Cyu:C). Thus, maximally five different root vowels in derived roots can be identified. For each of these vowels, application of imbrication, unlike in lexical roots, is a possibility under the condition that the resulting vowel after imbrication does not totally displace the vowel of the derived root. In other words, the elemental content of the derived root vowel must be a proper subset of the output long vowel after imbrication. This means that imbrication is barred in the derived roots of the shape Cu:C and Co:C where imbrication would yield 13 Note that the phonological level is the relevant level referred to here as the CV roots involved in these cases no longer have independent use and the resulting ‘bases’ or derived roots are semantically non-compositional. See Greenberg (1974) for some insightful CV root etymologies and Meeussen (1967) for a list of reconstructed expansions.

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Cwi:C and Cwe:C, respectively. In these cases, the root vowels /u:/ and /o:/ (i.e. their elemental make-up) are totally or partially replaced. Consider the diagrammatic representations in (17) below for illustration. (17) a. *Cu:C Cwi:C b. *Co:C Cwe:C

Consider the representations in (17) to be two overlapping boxes where the middle cell is their intersection and the last two cells represent the root vowel (i.e. two cells for the root = two positions in the nuclear representation). In (17a) imbrication would imply that |U| would not be part of the root vowel interpretation and (17b) would imply that both |U| and |A| would not simultaneously be part of the root since only |A| would be part of the root. The two representations are therefore ungrammatical because they present a case where the derived root vowel is not contained in the output root vowel interpretation. Similarly, imbrication outputs of the derived roots Ce:C and Ci:C also violate the requirement to retain the identity of the root vowel, because the long vowels /e:/ and /i:/ do not form proper subsets of the long vowels produced after imbrication i.e. Ce:C and Ci:C, respectively, since they are exactly matched. These forms are also inadequate from the point of view of the perfective vowel generalization (14b) since the perfective /i/ fails to be independently recognizable in these forms. This latter requirement of the perfective, which is also explained by containment, can also be understood as the failure of a phonological process to take place if its effects cannot be seen on the surface.14 There thus seems to be a containment requirement such that imbrication only applies in a long vowel site if the elemental content of the target long vowel is contained in the output long vowel. A containment requirement then ensures that the input vocalic structure of the derived root is independently recognizable in the resulting long vowel after the incorporation of the perfective vowel /i/.15 Consider the illustration of containment in (18).

14 This also makes sense from the point of view of phonological processing since the phonological system can only recognize information that is phonologically discernible. 15 Notice that the same kind of containment requirement does not seem to hold in the creation of the expansion where the original CV root vowel falls outside the core vowel structure; bi-al-a byaal-a ‘plant’. This is an indication of this no longer being a synchronic phonological rule in contrast to the creation of the perfective forms.

U I I

U A I

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(18) a. Ce:C Ce:C b. Ci:C Ci:C c. Ca:C Ce:C

N O N N O N N O N N O N N O N N O N A A I I A A I I I Taking containment into account (18a) fails to produce an output long vowel where the input elements |A.I| can be identified independently of the perfect element |I|. Imbrication thus fails to take place in this case. This explains why complex verb forms such as ceel-a ‘dawn for’ (derived from ca-ilappl-a), have regular suffixation in the perfect: ceel-ele ‘has dawned for’, rather than the imbricated output (*ceel-e). In essence, the notion of containment accounts for the blocking effect that I have already alluded to in the discussion of CV roots. (18b), under the same reasoning, also fails to undergo imbrication. (18c), on the other hand, allows imbrication because the input root vowel consisting of the element |A|, is contained in the output vowel, consisting of the element combination |A.I|. What we capture by this is that only a long vowel /a:/ ever undergoes imbrication. Thus, in derived roots, imbrication is possible only if the output vowel after imbrication satisfies containment. This is a formalisation of the opacity effect noticed in these verbs in section 4. Consider now the derivation of the perfective in derived roots, i.e. roots involving expansions. (19a) contains the expansion -al-. The inability of /i/ and /a/ to fuse in this sequence, following discussions in section 3, causes /i/ to have glide interpretation while /a/ compensatorily lengthens to give the derived root: byaal- (root of the verb ‘to plant’). On the introduction of the perfective in (19b) |I| is added to the structure in the right vocalic position in which |I| is head and therefore results in /e/ interpretation while the remainder of the structure remains the same.16

16 I simplify the structures here somewhat. If we consider that the perfective comes with its own constituent structure then although the final structure would be identical to (19b) the whole representation would have to lose some structure by a process of reduction so as not to have a sequence of two ON pairs where the onset is empty; this would mean having three adjacent nuclear positions which cannot be interpreted.

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(19) C(G)CV- a. bí-al-a by-áal-a b. by-áal-a by-éel-e O N O N O N O N O N O N x x x x x x x x x x x x b i a: l a b i a l e I A A I I /e:/ In the discussion of imbrication in extended CV roots we have introduced the notion of derived root that results from the fusion of a CV root and a following VC suffix. Within a derived root, imbrication is only possible if it faithfully reproduces the root vowel without any containment violations.17 A final case to consider with respect to imbrication and vowel final roots/bases are cases involving the passive suffix -w-. If as argued, glides are part of nuclear rather than consonantal positions is it the case that perfective forms of passive forms will result in fusion between the passive vowel /u/ and the perfective suffix? 6. Imbrication and the Passive From foregoing discussions it is clear that in hiatus contexts involving an /u/ vowel followed by /i/ as would result from addition of the passive and the perfective vowels, there would be no total fusion attested since when /u/ is initial it will not be part of the head position and the predicted output /wi:/ will surface (see table on vowel combinations in section 3 for confirmation). As with the cases of the expansions we have just investigated, there are also forms with frozen passive suffixes i.e. bases that end in the passive -w- but are no longer treated as passives. These like regular passives raise the same questions with respect to fusion with the perfective. Consider the following examples of perfective forms of the passive. Frozen passive forms are given in (20a-d) but these behave on a par with active passives as in (20e) with respect to the perfective. 17 A finicky issue with the idea of containment that may now come to mind is that with the representation of glides assumed, i.e. as technically still part of the nuclear representation and hence still in the root one could argue that there is no containment violation on the part of the root vowels/elements. This issue further enhances the idea that at least two issues are always at play in containment; the identity of the root and the identity of the perfective vowel. Thus even if we treated forms like /wi:/ as not violating containment on the part of the root vowel, such forms would still consist a violation on the part of the perfective. As long as there is no situation that would only be judged on the containment of the root vowel, then the analysis holds.

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(20) (frozen) passive -w- a. filw-a ‘be unable’ fil-il-w-e ‘has been unable’ b. te:ndw-a ‘tire of’ te:nd-el-w-e ‘has grown weary of’ c. búlw-a ‘be lacking’ búl-il-w-e ‘has come to lack’ d. témw-a ‘love’ tém-en-w-e ‘has loved’ e. pet-w-a ‘be folded’ pet-el-w-e ‘has been folded’

In contrast to what might be expected, no fusion between the perfective /i/ and the /u/ of the passive takes place i.e. the forms *filwiile and *tendweele are ill-formed for (20a-b), for example. What we see is imbrication before the passive suffix but in this case both the V and C part of the perfective suffix appear. The passive, as noted by Meeussen (1959), always appears final in a base, i.e. in the position immediately preceding the stem-final vowel. This tendency has generally been attributed to the length of the passive with the view that shorter suffixes tend to come at the end of a base. Hyman (1995) uses a condition that recognises morphemes within phonology as circumscribable to induce this behaviour of the passive. There are two significant factors in imbrication with respect to the passive. Firstly, the passive is the only suffix that allows the perfect suffix to be totally parsed whenever the passive is the only derivational suffix present. Secondly, it appears as though all suffixes that are clearly non-imbricating, do ‘imbricate’ with respect to the passive; consider, for example, imbrication of the applicative in (21c-d).

(21) root a. tol-a ‘pick’ tol-w-a tol-el-w-e (pass.+perf.) b. pu:t-a ‘blow’ pu:t-il-a (appl) pu:t-il-w-a (appl.+pass.) c. pu:t-il-w-a (appl.+pass.) pu:t-iil-w-e *put-ilappl. -ilperf. -w-e

(appl.+pass.+perf.) In (21a), as in the cases with the frozen passives in (20), the perfective form of a passive produces the perfective suffix before the passive. (21b-c) show how the same process applies, when the passive is combined with other suffixes such as the applicative. (21c) shows that a perfective form of an applicativised passive (containing -il-w-) undergoes regular imbrication and the form where the perfective is parsed in full is ungrammatical. These examples are suggestive of the passive requiring some special treatment for the language as a whole. Recall, however, that we have treated glides as being part of nuclear representations. How could such a representation be implemented for the passive? In a passive verb such as tolwa in (21a) the only nuclear position that the glide is adjacent to is the FV. If we suppose that the passive is part of the FV structure akin to a light diphthong (because it has no constituent structure of its own) then the data in (21) follow in a quite straight-forward fashion. What this

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means is that the passive will have the same distributional pattern as the FV i.e. all suffixes will precede it. The issues to be explained as raised by the data in (21) are that whenever the passive is the only suffix in the base, the perfective treats the base as if it were a root, i.e. no imbrication applies, the perfective suffix is parsed in full. Conversely, when other suffixes, such as the applicative are present, regular imbrication occurs with the perfective. This passive structure explains why all suffixes are ‘imbricated’ with respect to the passive. The proposed analysis where the passive is part of the FV explains these issues because all bases that are only extended with the passive are phonologically parsed as roots and should as such not show imbrication; and all suffixes that interact with the passive must precede it because the passive only becomes visible with the FV, added suffixes will therefore provide the context for imbrication.18 Frozen passives are structurally treated the same as active passives. Consider the representations that explain the interaction of the passive and the perfective below. (22) CVC(CV)G- bases a. tém-w-a tém-en-w-e b. tol-el-w-a tol-eel-w-e ‘has loved’ ‘has been picked for’ O N O N O N O N O N O N O N x x x x x x x x x x x x x t e m e n u e t o l e i l u e e: For frozen passives such as (22a), regular suffixation illustrates that roots can still be recognized even when they have lost independent use. In (22b) we see that the applicative suffix is treated as base-final, in which case imbrication applies normally.19 18 This position of the passive may also shed some light on why its long variant -iw-, which is now hardly productive in Bemba, does not trigger vowel harmony as seen in forms such as ensh-iw-a ‘be driven’. If one thought of domains, the proposed analysis for the passive would mean that it is outside the root domain explaining the lack of vowel harmony. There would then be the challenge of representation; are i-w-a all in the FV slot? In addition, there is some variation in vowel harmony so that lek-ew-a ‘be stopped/be divorced’ is acceptable for some speakers revealing that some reanalysis is taking place. Other Bantu languages, such as Swahili, where the long passive is still in use, show that it regularly undergoes vowel harmony. 19 In contrast to the frozen passive behaviour just discussed, the reciprocal interacts quite differently with frozen passives in that it always occurs after the frozen passive: tendwa ‘tire of’ tendwana, *tend-an-w-a; temwa ‘love/like’ temwana, *tem-an-w-a. It thus seems that the reciprocal treats the frozen passive form as a root. It is not surprising that such a reanalysis should start with the reciprocal

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7. Conclusion This paper has sought to find explanation for cases where imbrication is blocked in Bemba. It was shown that imbrication is a process that targets bases to the exclusion of roots. The aim of the paper was to highlight how this autonomy of the root is manifested by particularly focusing on those situations where the integrity of the root is compromised by processes of vowel fusion. Such situations arise in cases involving CV roots. Since extended CV roots form bases they should in principle be targets of imbrication but since fusion applies between the root and the extension vowel, the target site of imbrication in these cases is also the site of the root vowel. As the data revealed there was a disparity in the application of imbrication; it applied in some cases (when a low vowel was involved) and it was blocked in other cases. It was argued that the most insightful way of viewing this blocking effect was to regard the autonomy of the root as implying a desire to retain the vowel colour of the root vowel visible. Vowel fusion processes were therefore assessed with respect to whether they retained the root vowel colour. It was suggested that such retention of vowel colour is best assessed in terms of containment, namely that imbrication only applied in CV extended roots if the vowel colour of the root was contained in the output vowel. It was also shown that this goes hand in hand with a containment requirement on the part of the perfective suffix vowel. The vowel fusion processes discussed revealed the internal organization of vocalic privative primes and argued for a representation which treated glides as remaining within nuclear structure with the ability to be interpreted separately from the remainder of the vowel structure at the phonetic level. Such a position can be maintained under the understanding that phonological interpretation operates on the process and licensing constraints established in the language. Thus derived roots in Bemba provide further support for the autonomy of the root by characterising the root vowel features as resistant to being obliterated by phonological processes such as imbrication via vowel fusion. Arguments for the autonomy of the root are well established in Bantu; the root carries the main lexical meaning of the verb; the root is the trigger rather than the undergoer of various phonological processes (such as vowel harmony); the root can be subject to minimality conditions; all conflating on the idea that the root provides essential information for processing. The issues discussed in this paper also show that phonology can be used as a window into diachrony and be used as a tool to access how deeply embedded particular diachronic processes are. We have seen a situation where derived roots can still be phonologically recognized as being more complex than lexical

since the reciprocal and the passive cannot combine in the synchronic phonology. Thus for synchronic tol-w-a ‘be pikced’ neither *tol-an-w-a nor *tol-w-an-a are possible. See Hyman and Mchombo (1992) for some discussion on suffix order in Bantu.

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roots. Only time will tell whether these derived roots get fully innovated into roots at the phonological level as well. References Bastin, Y. 1983. La finale verbale-ide et l’imbrication en Bantou (Annales du Museé Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, Sciences Humaines 114). Tervuren: Museé Royal de l’Afrique Centrale. Blois, de K.F. 1975. Bukusu generative phonology and aspects of Bantu structure. Tervuren: Museé Royal de l’Afrique Centrale. Botma, B. 2004. Phonological aspects of nasality: an element-based dependency approach. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Chitoran, I. and A. Nevins 2008. (eds.) Studies on the phonetics and phonology of glides. Lingua 118.12. Devos, M. 2004. A grammar of Makwe. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leiden. Givón, T. 1970. On ordered rules and the modified base of ChiBemba verbs. African Studies 29(1): 47-54. Greenberg, J. 1974. Bantu and its closest relatives. Studies in African Linguistics. Supplement 5: 115-124. Harris, J. and G. Lindsey, 1995. The elements of phonological representation. In J. Durand and F. Katamba (eds.) Frontiers of Phonology, pp. 34-79. London: Longman. Hyman, L. M. 1995. Minimality and Prosodic Morphology of ChiBemba imbrication. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 16: 3-39. Hyman, L. M. and S. Mchombo, 1992, Morphotactic constraints in the Chichewa verb. Berkeley Linguistic Society 18: 350-364. Kaye, J., J. Lowenstamm and J-R. Vergnaud, 1985. The internal structure of phonological elements: a theory of charm and government. Phonology 1(2): 305-328. Kashoki, M.E. 1968. A phonemic analysis of Bemba. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Karsten � 12/7/12 10:56Comment [1]: What is this? A collection of papers? If so, publisher and place, please.

Nancy Kula � 23/7/12 16:53Comment [2]: It’s an edited volume of a jornal, Lingua, so in this case treated as ajournal entry.

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Kisseberth, C. W. and M. I. Abasheikh 1974. A case of systematic avoidance of homonyms. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 4(1): 107-124. Kula, N. C. 2002. The phonology of verbal derivation in Bemba. LOT Dissertation Series 65. Utrecht: Holland Academic Graphics. Kula, N. C. 2008. Derived Environment Effects: A representational approach. Lingua 118: 1328-43. Meeussen, A. E. 1959. Essai de Grammaire Rundi. Tervuren: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale. Meeussen, A. E. 1967. Bantu grammatical reconstructions. Africana Linguistica 3: 81-121. Mould, M. 1972. On reconstructing the modified base of Bantu verbs. Studies in African Linguistics 3: 107-125. Ngunga, A. 1998. Imbrication in CiYao. In I. Maddieson and T. J. Hinnebusch (eds.) Language History and Description in Africa, pp. 167-176. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. Scheer, T. 2004. A Lateral Theory of Phonology: What is CVCV and Why Should it Be? Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Nancy Kula � 23/7/12 16:54Deleted: Ph.D. dissertation. University of Leiden.