The Syllable Structure and Syllable Based Morphophonemic Processes in Gawwada: Based on Moraic Model Representations
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Date
2011-04
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Gawwada are a small ethnic group in Ethiopia who inhabit the Omo region west
of Lake Chamo River and North East of the Konso, and speak a language of the
Cushitic family known as Gawwada.
This thesis deals with the syllable structure of Gawwada in light of the Moraic model
and discusses the sound pattern, basic syllable types, syllable constituents,
phonotactic constraints and syllabification as well as syllable-based morphophonemic
processes.
Unlike the prevIOus studies made by Harageweyn (2002) and Geberew (2003),
Gawwada has thirty consonant and five vowel phonemes. Among the thirty consonant
phonemes, five of them, fbi, xl, hi, lal, and Iv, are newly identified in this study. The
language has also eight basic syllable types: V, W , VC, CV, CVV, CVC, WC, and
CWC. In addition, it has a syllable template of optional onset and coda, and
obligatory nucleus. Besides, closed versus open, light versus weight, syllable types
and mono, bi and multi-syllable have been identified. The study also pointed out that
in Gawwada, word initial and final positions do not allow cluster of consonants.
Consequently, the inexistence of word initial clusters has made them to be out of
moraic considerations because of tbe claim that syllable onsets do not contribute to
syllable weight as they are assumed to have no moraic value. Contrary to this, word
final clusters do contribute to syllable weight bearing a mora. During the analysis,
sequences of three consonant clusters (tri-consonants) have been re-syllabified so as
to make them permissible sequences by reducing them to sequences of two clusters at
word medial positions.
Finally, the moraic model, apart from its basic aim, which is solving syllable related
issues such as vowel and consonant length, and light and heavy segments, ha also
shown its strength by treating and explaining the morphophonemic changes such asassimilation, deletion and reduplication in light of the phonotactics of the language
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