Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Featural affixes are phonological features that function as grammatical morphemes. The most commonly found cases are tonal ( Akinlabi 1996 ). An example is the associative marker in Bini ( Amayo 1976 ), exemplified in (1). (The forms before the arrow indicate the isolation forms of the nouns and the forms after the arrow are associative constructions. For clarity, the tones in the examples in (1) are indicated with both tone marks and the letters L, H for Low, High respectively. ↓ indicates a downstepped tone on the following vowel.) However, several cases of non-tonal features functioning as grammatical morphemes have also been described in the literature. A representative list is given in (2). (2) Non-tonal examples of featural morphemes a. In Chaha, the 3rd masculine object is indicated by labialization. ( Johnson 1975 ; McCarthy 1983 ; Hendricks 1989 ; Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994 ; Rose 1994, 2007) b. Nuer indicates tense/aspect distinctions with the features [continuant] and [voice]. ( Crazzolara 1933 ; Lieber 1987 ; Frank 1999 ) c. In Zoque, the 3rd person singular is marked by palatalization. ( Wonderly 1951 ) d. [nasal] is the 1st person possessive marker in Terena. ( Bendor-Samuel 1960, 1966) e. The feature of “uncontrolledness’ is signaled by palatalization in Japanese. ( Hamano 1986 ; Mester and Itô 1989 ; Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994 ; ... log in or subscribe to read full text