PHONOLOGICAL (A)SYMMETRIES OF NASAL PREFIXES IN BANTUByJonathan Nyabuto ChotiThis study investigates segmental alternations triggered by Bantu nasal prefixes of class 9/10 and 1SG subject and object (henceforth, /N/). The realization of /N/ is associated with a wide range of segmental altenations that affect the preceding vowel, /N/ itself, and stem-initial segments. The alternations examined in this study have been organized into three groups: (a) /N/ in prenasal vocalic and nonlocal alternations; (b) alternations that affect /N/; and (c) postnasal alternations. The vocalic processes that occur before /N/ include vowel epenthesis, vowel lengthening, and initial vowel shortening. The behavior of /N/ in nonlocal processes involve Meinhof’s Law, Dahl’s Law, and nasal-consonant harmony. The processes examined that target /N/ include nasal place assimilation, effacement, devoicing, aspiration, and syllabicity alternation. The realization of /N/ before vowel-initial stems is also examined. The effect of /N/ on stem-initial consonants is reflected in a series of postnasal alternations such as (de)nasalization, (de)voicing, (de)aspiration, debuccalization, de-implosion, (de)affrication, nasal substitution, consonant deletion, and hardening. These processes have been described and analyzed.Thus, thiis dissertation brings together from a sample of 24 Bantu languages the range of segmental patterns associated with /N/ and formalizes them within two phonological models, that is, moraic theory and Element-based Dependency (EBD). The study contributes to the general investigation into nasality and develops an overview of the range of issues and data related to the study of /N/ in Bantu. The main goal of the study is to describe and account for the crosslinguistic variations of alternations conditioned by /N/. The (non-)occurrence of prenasal vowel epenthesis and lengthening are attributed to differences related to contrastive vowel length. The two processes are shown to occur in languages with contrastive vowel length. They arise from the demorification of /N/ after /N/ is demorified. A moraic model is adopted to formalize the two alternations that occur to rescue the mora vacated by /N/. /N/ is shown to be non-moraic in languages without contrastive vowel length; these disallow vowel epenthesis and CL. CL before /N/ is blocked initially due to an overriding Initial Vowel Shortening rule (IVS). The consonantal alternations conditioned by /N/ have been formalized within EBD. This model uses elements as monovalent features to represent segmental structure and processes. The main operations used to represent processes include linking, deletion/delinking, switching, and adding. Segmental alterntions that involve simpler and fewer operations are more frequent than those that involve more and/or complex operations. Switching of elemnts is the most complex operation while the rest are simple. Nasalization, nasal place assimilation, (de)voicing, and (de)aspiration are frequent alternations induced by /N/ beacause they each involve a simple and single operation. Postnasal (de)affrication are infrequent for they involve a switching operation.This study shows that crosslinguistic variations in the processes triggered by /N/ are determined by language-specific phonology and the phonological structures of nasal manner, other manner types, place, and laryngeal properties of segments. Some variations relate to laryngeal contrasts some of which, for instance, aspiration, voicelessness, and breathy voice have been reanalyzed terepreted as phonetic variations of the same phonological segment represented by the same element that is used for fricatives.
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