An Optimality Theory Account of Somali Consonantal Behavior

An Optimality Theory Account of Consonantal Behavior in Somali

1. Introduction and Background Information

Somali is an Afro-asiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. With approximately fifteen million native speakers, it is primarily spoken in the Horn of Africa. Somali enjoys official language status in Somalia and Somaliland, a national language in Djibouti, and a working language in Ethiopia. It must be stated outright that Somali is a phonologically rich language and thus a complete account of Somali phonology is out of the scope of this paper. Instead, I will analyze the behavior of consonants within different environments and account for the ways in which these behaviors interact with each other. Specifically, the focus will be on the occurrences of spirantization, degemination, coalescence and delabialization in Somali and I will account for these phenomena using an Optimality Theory approach. Somali bears a rather large consonantal inventory, which is shown in (1) on the following page. I opted to exclude the vowel inventory as vowels are not relevant in this account of the language. Note that although the data shown below in(l) use the symbols [s] and [c], I will use the standard IPA symbols to represent the consonants [J] and'[tj] respectively. It is important to note that the segments [h, ß, ö, y, k] are phones in Somali - not phonemes - as they all are derived from other underlying segments. All of these phones are derived via a spirantization constraint that will be introduced in Section 4 with the exception of the epiglottal consonant [h], which is derived from /h/. Interestingly, both [h] and [h] occur in free variation with each other; a fact that begs further investigation, but one that is unfortunately out of the scope of this paper. The consonants shown in (1) are phonemes; they must exist underlyingly in order to surface.

(1) Somali Consonantal Inventory

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2. Epenthesis vs. Deletion

Although the general scope of this analysis is to account for the spirantization and degemination in Somali, it must first be said that there is a general preference of epenthesis over deletion. This is somewhat expected as Somali has a CVC syllable template, thus epenthesis helps adhere to this without ridding itself of any lexical information. Some examples of epenthesis in Somali are shown below in (2).

(2) Examples ofEpenthesis

a) /galb/ [ga.lab] ‘afternoon’ N.Indef.Sing
b) / tjilf/ [tji.lif] ‘tree bark’ N.Indef.Sing
c) /ma:lm/ [ma:.lin] ‘day’ N.Indef.Sing

An interesting observation is that opposed to examples (a) and (b), in (c) we see that the epenthetic vowel is not a copy vowel from the underlying representation. I can thus postulate that epenthetic vowels which are not identical to the vowel in the underlying representation are an exception and therefore unpredictable. Epenthesis will play into the overall account ofthe language, although somewhat indirectly, and thus it is important to address it outright. In Optimality Theory, this concerns the two faithfulness constraints MAX and Dep, where MAX vies to avoid deletion and Dep vies to avoid epenthesis. I will show the preference for epenthesis via a ranking tableau in (3).

(3) Max >> Dep

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Ignoring the mapping of /b/ to [ß] for the moment, the optimal candidate is the one which undergoes epenthesis. It must be noted, however, that although deletion does in fact occur in some environments within Somali phonotactics, it is not of importance here for the sake of spirantization. Since intervocalic epenthesis, and not deletion, is observed in instances where two different consonants are adjacent and, lamina position to postulate that the constraint Dep must be low-ranked with respect to the other constraints that will be postulated later on.

3. Somali Geminates and the Process ofDegemination

The first phonological aspect of Somali that I want to address is the occurrence of geminates in the language and the process of degemination and in which instances this phenomenon occurs. Only sonorants are observed occurring as geminates in the language, therefore the inventory of geminates is confined to [mm, nn, rr, 11], Furthermore, geminates are only found word-internally and never occur root-initially. There is phonetic grounding for the geminate inventory seen here, as sonorants are much easier to pronounce in the lengthy manner in which geminates require. Somali does not permit geminate stops however; any underlying instance of geminate stops must undergo degemination. Degemination is the reduction of a pair of double consonants within a word, meaning the pair is reduced to one singular consonant. This process occurs rather frequently in Somali due to the fact that many suffixes begin with a consonant, particularly with respect to nouns; gender is marked via the suffixes /-ga/ and /-da/ which denote masculine and feminine definiteness respectively. This account of degemination will focus on masculine and feminine nouns in their definite forms. It is important to note that degemination seems to occur solely within an intervocalic environment. A few examples of this process are shown below in (4).

(4) Examples of Degemination

a) /bog-ga/ [bo.ga] ‘page’ N.Def.Sing.Fem
b) /do:d-da/ [do:.da] ‘argument’ N.Def.Sing.Fem

Firstly, we observe the deletion of a consonant, thus it is evident that the faithfulness constraint Max is at play here. For the sake of specificity, I will also postulate the ad hoc constraint NoGem which is defined below in (5).

(5) NoGem assigns one violation mark for each pair of geminate consonants in the underlying representation which surfaces to the output.

NoGem must be ranked above Max because while we do see instances of deletion in Somali, we never see instances of geminate consonants surfacing. There is phonetic grounding in this observation as geminate consonants, particularly with respect to stops like the examples shown in the data, are difficult or unfavorable to pronounce in an elongated manner. The ranking of these two constraints is shown in (6).

(6) NoGem >> Max

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The candidate (a) is selected as optimal because it does not violate NoGem. Since geminates never surface to the output, it is fair to postulate that NoGem is undominated amongst the other constraints and thus will never see a violation mark from the optimal candidate. Apart from the fact that there is phonetic grounding for degemination, the constraint NoGem also aids in confining Somali within its CVC syllable template.

4. Intervocalic Spirantization of Unaspirated Stops

Spirantization is a type of lenition in which a stop is weakened into a fricative. There are two different environments in which consonants are spirantized in Somali, the first one being intervocalically and therefore more widespread within its phonology. Some examples of intervocalic spirantization are shown in (7).

(7) Examples of Intervocalic Spirantization

a. /odej/ [o.öej] ‘old man’ N.INDEF.MASC.SING
b. /dibn/ [di.bin] [di.ßin] ‘cheek’ N.INDEF.MASC.SING

To help account for this phenomenon, I will call upon the two faithfulness constraints LENITION, borrowed from Kennedy (2008), to which I will henceforth abbreviate as simply Len, and lDENT[CONT], The definitions of these constraints are shown in (8) and (9) respectively.

(8) Len assigns one violation mark for every intervocalic unaspirated stop that is [-cont].

(9) Ident[Cont] assigns one violation mark for every segment in the input when the feature [±cont] does not surface faithfully.

It must be the case that Len is ranked above Ident [Cont], otherwise we would never observe instances of spirantization in the output. This assertion is shown in the ranking tableau in (10).

(10) Len >> Ident[Cont]

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Candidate (a) is selected as optimal because it satisfies Len by having the intervocalic /d/ spirantize to [Ö] in the output, while violating lDENT[CONT] since the stop /d/ is [-cont] while the fricative [Ö] is [+cont]. Furthermore, it is possible now to postulate that Len cannot be ranked with respect to Max, as any time deletion occurs to a segment, spirantization cannot also occur and vice versa.

5. Spirantization After a Guttural Consonant

The second instance in Somali in which spirantization occurs to an unaspirated stop is when a guttural consonant precedes it. Somali has the following sequence of guttural consonants in its phonetic inventory: [q, %, k, ?, h, £, h]. This is a curious phenomenon, and it begs the question: why are guttural consonants treated differently phonologically than others? While we can only speculate, John McCarthy in his 1989 article on Semitic gutturals argues that the guttural consonants are a natural class due to the fact that they are specified for the pharyngeal articulator node. Some examples of this phenomenon are shown below in(ll).

(11) Examples of Spirantization Following a Guttural Consonant

a. /bah-da/ [bah.öa] ‘noble’ N.Sing.Def.Fem
b. /wasa%-da/ [wa.sa%.öa] ‘dirt’ N.Sing.Def.Fem

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