The three right-edge Shilluk H's: An argument for subtonal features and strata
Armel Jolin
June 2025
 

In the inflectional paradigm of Shilluk nouns, three morphological categories - the plural pertensive (PERT.PL), the associative plural (APL) and the vocative (VOC) - are realized as floating H suffix, and yet produce different outcomes in identical tonal environments. While this appears to represent an instance of morpheme-specific phonology, I show that the Shilluk pattern is compatible with Trommer's (2024a) phonologically general approach to grammatical tone effects provided two additional assumptions: (a) that each of the relevant affixes is introduced at a different phonological stratum; and (b) that tonal primitives are decomposed into subtonal features. A phonologically general approach to grammatical tone may therefore require strata only (Kuria, Trommer 2024b), subtonal features only (Tenyidie, Meyase 2021; Gaahmg, Trommer 2022;), or both (Shilluk, this paper).
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/009064
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: NELS 55 proceedings
keywords: shilluk, grammatical tone, floating tones, subtonal features, stratal ot, morphology, phonology
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