The Syllable of Kistane: A Moraic approach
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2011-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This thesis is concerned with the syllable of Kistane and is based on auto-segmental, non-linear phonology, within the framework of the Moraic Theory. The Kistane language is an Ethio-Semitic language. Kistanes “Christians” are the people who speak this language. Kistane has a total of thirty phonemes of which seven are vowels and twenty three are consonants. The syllables types which were identified in this thesis for Kistane are V, VC, VCC, CV, CVC and CVCC. Based on the moraic analysis, Kistane distinguishes between heavy and light syllables. Bimoraic syllables are heavy whereas monomoraic syllables are light. Syllable-final consonants are not moraic; rather they are extrametrical. However, CVC syllables are considered heavy by the application of the rule of weight-by-position. This is true only if the CVC syllable occurs at the initial or medial position in a word directly followed by another C. The Kistane syllable is characterized by incorporating geminate consonants which receive only one mora. The second part of the geminate becomes part of the following syllable. Besides, the vowel /ɨ/, usually analyzed as epenthetic vowel, is considered a phoneme because its occurrence is not always predictable and it also occurs in minimal pairs. However, this vowel does not appear at the word-final position. Moreover, there exists the glottal stop [ʔ] on the phonetic level in Kistane but it is not regarded as a phoneme. This is due to the fact that the glottal stop is restricted to appear only between vowels, i.e. its occurrence is predictable. Furthermore, there are no minimal pairs in which the glottal stop brings about a meaning difference.
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syllable of Kistane