Abstract
Data from two closely related varieties of Bamana (Bambara), a Mande language spoken in West Africa, reveal that these varieties differ significantly from one another in terms of the syllable shapes they permit in their inventories. A comparison of normative ‘standard’ Bamana and that spoken by a young cohort of individuals in the Malian capital, Bamako, reveals that the latter colloquial variety has synchronically developed complex CCV and CVC syllable shapes, while the normative variety permits only maximal CV syllables. We posit that this development of complex syllable shapes in Colloquial Bamana is a result of an overall drive towards word minimization in the language and that the language’s chosen trajectory of minimization is predicted and best analyzed in reference to the Split Margin Approach to the syllable (e.g., Baertsch 2002). This paper formalizes Colloquial Bamana in an optimality-theoretic framework and details preferential vowel and consonant deletion patterns that create complex syllable shapes, the role of syllable margin phonotactics in driving these patterns, and other important phonological characteristics of the language that interact with and/or prevent minimization from occurring.
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Notes
Portions of the data and analysis reported in this paper have been presented by the authors at various conferences held in 2009 and 2010. Data were collected from elicitation sessions with two native speakers of Bamana in Bamako, Mali, in July–August 2010, and from the third author, who is also a native speaker of the language, in 2009–2010.
CCV syllables with nasal + liquid clusters have also been attested in some CB words.
The exception to this is a small number of words with NC unit segments (i.e., pre-nasalized stops) in word-initial position, vowel-initial borrowings, and emergent nasal codas arising upon the juxtaposition of phonemic nasal vowels and plosives resulting in NC sequences across a syllable boundary. To be clear, word-initial NC sequences are considered unit segments, rather than a sequence of a nasal + obstruent occupying a complex onset (Bird 1977; Creissels 1989; Konatè and Vydrine 1989). These pre-nasalized stops contrast with plain stops in word-initial position and are not found in other word positions. Based upon these observations, in word-internal positions, we assume that a nasal + consonant sequence derived by vowel deletion is separated by a syllable boundary. This follows from language internal evidence, as well as general principles of sonority sequencing.
Given Richness of the Base (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004), one might assume that the reduced (i.e., syncopated) form of the word is its lexical representation. The problem with such an assumption is that the non-reduced form of the word can surface in compounds. For example, the CB word for ‘prayer’, [sel] corresponds to SB [seli]. However, when this word is part of a compound in CB, a full form surfaces, as in [seli+saa] ‘sacrificial sheep’. Further, CB words that display variation between two syncopated output forms, as shown later in (30), can best be explained with a non-reduced input. Moreover, the tones on the moras of CB reduced forms reflect their tonal quality on the corresponding moras of the SB forms; such would just be a coincidence if the reduced forms were assumed to be the lexical representation. Thus, while input forms with complex onsets should be considered, there is strong evidence that existing CB lexical items have non-reduced SB forms as their underlying input.
It is possible to equate the Syncope cover constraint discussed here with Zoll’s (1996) *Struc(σ) constraint. However, while the two constraints, as they are defined, have a similar net effect, *Struc(σ) is intended to militate against vowel epenthesis as a repair strategy, rather than to compel vowel syncope. Syncope, here, is a cover constraint comprised of constituent constraints that do, indeed, compel vowel syncope. The replacement of this cover constraint with constraints better defining its mechanism is a key motivation in our analysis.
To be clear, for expository purposes, we have chosen to employ *Peak [+hi] and *Peak[-hi] to represent the general competition between the removal of high vowels and non-high vowels. As discussed in Green (2010), however, in relevant instances, there is a preference to delete a mid vowel (i.e., [e,ε,o,ɔ]) rather than the low vowel [a]. This, too, follows from the universals inherent in the Peak Hierarchy and does not detract from the generalizations discussed here.
In (11), we do not show the candidate [ca.pal], which would have iambic structure. As discussed in Sect. 4.2, CB tends to avoid syncopated output forms with iambic structure. It is proposed in Green (2010) that word-final CVC syllables are heavy in CB. We typically will not show such candidates in our evaluation tableaux.
The parenthesized elements in (15) and (16) are those that would be drawn into the syllable peak and, for the most part, are not relevant to our discussion of syllable margins in this paper. Consequently, when we refer to the M1 hierarchy in this article, we are referring only to true consonants and not to glides or vowels. We note, however, that there are glide-initial words in Bamana.
The analysis below follows from the theoretical proposal underlying the SMA that Faith outranks margin constraints that permit particular consonants to occupy M2 positions. We point out, however, that in CB, the faithfulness constraint, Max, interacts with the low-ranking *M2 margin constraints in such a way that, in order for a violation of a relevant *M2 constraint to occur, Max will also necessarily be violated. Thus, the true interaction (and therefore ranking) between Max and these lower-ranked constraints is obscured. Following from this assumption, we employ a ranking of Max ≫ *M2/Son in the discussion and tableaux below (e.g., in (21)) although we assert that, analytically, one could otherwise employ an indeterminate ranking between these candidates with no effect on the optimal outputs predicted. The key mechanism for syncope in CB, as shown in Sect. 2, concerns the crucial relationship between the *Peak constraints and Max.
An anonymous reviewer asks what prevents the ranking *M1/X ≫ Faith ≫ *M2/X, which would result in a language with codas but no onsets. First, it should be remembered that *M1/X is a cover for all the specific constraints given in (15). In this regard, we note there are languages such as Yakut (Baertsch 2002) and Korean (Smith 2003) that disallow single onsets of high sonority. In such languages, constraints militating against high sonority consonants in M1 positions would be ranked above Faith, while constraints against low sonority onsets would be ranked below Faith. Further, it has been claimed by Breen and Pensalfini (1999) that a dialect of the Australian language Arrernte lacks onsets altogether. While the argument for this is not solid since the language does have words beginning with single consonants, if their claim is correct, then Arrernte could be a language with the ranking *M1/X ≫ Faith ≫ *M2/X. The question then is why onsetless languages are extremely rare or perhaps non-existent. Others have discussed this matter. We can follow Breen and Pensalfini (1999) and references cited therein in suggesting that the rarity of such languages has to do with perceptual factors that identify the right edge of the consonant (i.e., its release) as being more perceptually salient than the transition from the vowel to the following consonant. Concerning this, it is interesting to observe that Arrernte has pre-stopped nasal consonants and retroflex consonants, both of which have a left edge cue of saliency that is of importance in their identification. See, in particular, Steriade (2001) and Hamann (2003) on retroflex consonants. Since we view this explanation for the rarity or non-existence of onsetless languages as being external to the phonology, an optimality-theoretic grammar does not have to encode it.
A reviewer asks if this means that the SMA predicts that the second position of complex onsets should always pattern together with sonorant codas. The answer is no. In Sect. 3.2, we detail how complex onsets are analyzed by the conjunction of *M1 and *M2 constraints. If, for example, the conjoined margin constraints are undominated in a language while *M2 constraints are all ranked below Faith, the resultant language would have a maximal syllable of CVC, allowing for codas but not onset clusters. See Davis and Baertsch (2011) for discussion on how the SMA accounts for syllable typology.
The ranking of the *Peak constraints over Max, here, follows from arguments made above concerning the syncope process in CB. We assume, following the SMA, that the ranking of margin constraints relative to Faith (i.e., Max) is responsible for the difference of syllable types allowed in the two language varieties.
Most commonly, the second member of voiceless obstruent-nasal complex onsets is the alveolar nasal, although velar obstruent-bilabial nasal complex onsets are acceptable for some speakers (e.g., /l
k
m 
/ → [l
.m
]/[l
.km
] ‘handful’, /tákámá/ → [táá.má]/[tá.kmá] ‘journey’), however never word-initially (e.g., /kámál
/] → [ká.ml
] ‘boyfriend’, *kma.lẽ). Baertsch and Davis (2009) point out that segments at the same sonority level may not pattern exactly the same way and thus may account for the inconsistent behavior of such sequences. Such cases are proposed to be due to language-specific markedness constraints. In this way, the approach taken by Baertsch and Davis differs from that taken in Gouskova (2004), who proposes that segments at the same sonority level should behave identically. Moreover, Gouskova’s approach does not capture the formal relationship between “M2” consonants, which is an important component and advantage of Baertsch’s SMA. See also Pons-Moll (2011) for a comparison between Baertsch and Davis (2009) and Gouskova (2004), though we do not comment on this here.In certain more complex constructions, e.g., nominal and verbal compounds and other polymorphemic derivatives, more than a single instance of segmental deletion is possible. Details about reduction in these constructions are in Green (2010).
This interpretation of local domains in constraint conjunction is consistent with the thorough discussion on this matter in Ito and Mester (2003).
Bamana has a 7-vowel system with an oral series (i, e, ε, u, o, ɔ, a) and a phonemic nasal vowel series where all vowels have a nasal counterpart. Thus far in this paper, a distinction has been drawn between the behavior of [+hi] vowels (e.g., i,u) and [-hi] vowels (e.g., e, ε, o, ɔ, a) for the sake of simplicity. While this generalization captures the data presented in this paper, Green (2010) discusses cases where it is necessary to introduce a further distinction between mid vowels (e.g., e, ε, o, ɔ) and low vowels (i.e., a) into the language’s phonology, given that mid vowels are preferable syncope targets to low vowels when the choice to delete one or the other vowel presents itself, e.g., /dàmàt
m
/ → [dàmàtm
], *dam.tε.mε, ‘to exaggerate’, but such examples are not common.This is reminiscent of an alternative approach to variation, discussed in Coetzee (2006), which may be a promising method of evaluation for Bamana. In Coetzee’s analysis, output forms that equally satisfy a specified set of high-ranking constraints are considered to be ‘well-formed enough’ in comparison to other potential output candidates and are therefore permitted to surface as grammatical variants. Coetzee suggests that there exists in a grammar (i.e., a constraint hierarchy) a point at which output candidates are well-formed, and thus constraint violations incurred below this point are not detrimental to the overall grammatical well-formedness of the candidate. Candidates would differ only in their harmonicity. In the two evaluations in (33), candidates that violate constraints to the right of (below) Max, where there is a bold line that separates Max from other constraints, can indeed surface just as long as they are tied on the constraints to the left of the bold line. The details of this alternative must be left for future research.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to our attention.
We assert that this ranking relative to other relevant constraints is justified if one also considers that *[far] is an illicit output for the input [fàrí] (see (37)). We discuss in Sect. 4.2, however, that additional factors are at play such that an alternative reduction, e.g., *[fri], is also non-optimal. The optimal form for such words is unreduced and fully faithful to the input.
We also point out other potential alternatives that could explain the distribution and behavior of word-final sonorants in CB, one of which being that [l] and [r] have opposite specifications for the feature [continuant]. This is a cross-linguistically well-motivated possibility (e.g., Kenstowicz 2005; Abramson 1962; Traill 1985) and would suggest that [-continuant] liquids (i.e., rhotics) are banned from word-final position. This however leaves open the status of [continuant] for nasals, which must be taken up separately. Mielke (2005) reports that it is not unheard of for nasals to pattern with other sonorants, either [+continuant] or [-continuant], thus providing some evidence in support of rhotics and nasals patterning together. For the present time, we will assume that the motivating factor behind the distribution of these sounds is sonority. Further, because nasals are clearly less sonorous than liquids, it is reasonable to assume that a *M2/Nasalfinal would also be undominated in the constraint hierarchy.
An unusual case in CB is found in words like /d
l
/ → [dl
] ‘beer’ where speakers almost unanimously choose a CCV outcome to an otherwise favored CVC, e.g., *[dɔl]. This outcome is exceptional and may reflect the fact that this Colloquial variety of Bamana is in a state of flux such that syncope preferences for words of particular shapes and containing particular vowels are not yet fixed. It may also be possible that the lexical form of such words is, in fact, CCV. As Green (2010) discusses at length, the choice of CCV in these instances may also be related to the fact that CB, overall, prefers complexity at the left edge of words resulting from a constraint like Coincide-σ. For other examples of a drive toward left edge complexity see Frigeni (2009) on Sardinian and Tamarit-Torres et al. (2010) on Algherese Catalan.As a reviewer correctly points out, this indeterminate ranking would occur higher in the constraint hierarchy than *M2/[l]final, *M2/Son. Thus, *M2/[r]final ≫ *Peak[+hi] ≫ *Peak[-hi] ≫ Max ≫ σ [*M1/Obs&*M2/Son, NoCoda, Wd[*M1/Obs&*M2/Son ≫ *M2/[l]final, *M2/Son.
Another possible way to tackle this issue is in Harmonic Grammar (e.g., Smolensky and Legendre 2006; Farris-Trimble 2008). Within this framework, however, it has been argued that certain combinations of constraints are more costly than the simple summation of their constituent parts, thus leading scholars to appeal to proposals of superlinear constraint conjunction (Legendre et al. 2006), split additivity (Albright et al. 2008), and constraint weight exacerbation (Khanjian et al. 2010). An exploration into these effects is beyond the scope of the current paper; however the reader is referred to discussion of these phenomena as they apply to CB in Green (2010).
Another reasonable alternative for the attested CB data, as suggested by a reviewer, would be that the language is acting to satisfy some extension of the Obligatory Contour Principle (e.g., Leben 1973; Goldsmith 1976) such that sequences of identical vowels are dispreferred in the language. Such an analysis would employ a prosodically-conditioned OCP constraint on identical vowels that would compel the omission of a fully faithful candidate containing adjacent identical vowels in favor of other reduced candidates. The remaining candidates would then be evaluated by lower-ranked constraints, leaving little role (if any) for the *Peak constraints in evaluation. This alternative could readily account for the more problematic CB data. That is, it would attribute the unexpected failure of words like /kìbàrú/ → [kì.bà.rú], *[ki.bru] to be reduced due to the fact that these words do not contain a sequence of identical vowels. The observed reduction of words like /kábílá/ → [ká.blá], *[ka.bi.la], which do not violate the OCP and which create identical vowel sequences, would seem counterintuitive if, in fact, satisfaction of the OCP is the motivating factor behind minimization. Thus, the *Peak constraints (and the margin constraints) would still be necessary in addition to an OCP constraint. While we recognize that an OCP-style analysis is an attractive alternative to invoking locally-conjoined constraints, we believe that such an approach fails to capture the generalization inherent in the two processes of VCD and vowel syncope, as they relate to sonority and the trade-offs between competing constraints on peak markedness and segmental faithfulness.
By CCV, we specifically mean languages with obstruent-sonorant onset clusters. We leave aside in this paper the issue of the analysis of strident + obstruent clusters, which can be syllable- or word-initial in some languages, such as English and Italian, but are not permitted in CB. We point out here that often language-internal evidence suggests that strident + obstruent clusters behave like adjunct clusters rather than true onset clusters (see, for example, Davis 1990 on Italian). One possible way of analyzing adjunct clusters in the SMA is to view such clusters as involving a sequence of M1 positions. We leave this matter for future research.
In a similar way, Baertsch’s split margin approach to the syllable also predicts that in first language acquisition, CVC syllable should emerge before (or simultaneous with) CCV syllables. Although discussion of the acquisition literature is beyond the scope of the present paper, it should be noted that Levelt et al. (2000), who discuss parallel and predicted trajectories of complex syllable emergence in acquisition, observe that in developmental paths of syllable complexity, CVC syllables emerge before CCV syllables in both of their paths of development of syllable complexity.
k
m 
/ → [l
.m
]/[l
.km
] ‘handful’, /tákámá/ → [táá.má]/[tá.kmá] ‘journey’), however never word-initially (e.g., /kámál
/] → [ká.ml
] ‘boyfriend’, *kma.lẽ). Baertsch and Davis (
m
/ → [dàmàtm
], *dam.tε.mε, ‘to exaggerate’, but such examples are not common.
l
/ → [dl
] ‘beer’ where speakers almost unanimously choose a CCV outcome to an otherwise favored CVC, e.g., *[dɔl]. This outcome is exceptional and may reflect the fact that this Colloquial variety of Bamana is in a state of flux such that syncope preferences for words of particular shapes and containing particular vowels are not yet fixed. It may also be possible that the lexical form of such words is, in fact, CCV. As Green (References
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Acknowledgements
This paper has benefitted greatly from challenging comments and suggestions from Dan Dinnsen, Laura Downing, Sharon Rose, Lee Bickmore, Tracy Alan Hall, two anonymous reviewers, as well as from discussion at various conference presentations over the past two years. Any remaining errors or shortcomings are our responsibility. The work of the first two authors was supported in part by a grant to Indiana University from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #1023781.
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Green, C.R., Davis, S., Diakite, B. et al. On the role of margin phonotactics in Colloquial Bamana complex syllables. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 32, 499–536 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9208-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9208-6