Chapter 9. Be careful what you throw out: Gemination and tonal feet in Weledeh Dogrib

Date
2010-05
Authors
Jaker, Alessandro
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Hawai'i Press
Volume
Number/Issue
Starting Page
203
Ending Page
222
Alternative Title
Abstract
The Weledeh dialect of Dogrib (Tłįchǫ Yatiì) is spoken by people of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, in and around Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Within the formal framework of Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982), this paper argues for an over-arching generalization in the phonology of Weledeh Dogrib: the constraint NoContour-Ft, which prefers (High-High) and (Low-Low) feet, but militates against (High-Low) and (Low-High) feet. NoContour-Ft is satisfied differently in different morphophonological domains: vowel deletion at the Stem Level, gemination at the Word Level, and High to Mid tone lowering at the Postlexical Level. This analysis requires that consonant length be treated as phonological in Dogrib—that is, consonant length contributes to syllable weight and mora count—even though there are no minimal pairs based on consonant length. Similarly, the distinction between High and Middle tone does not distinguish any lexical items, but is nevertheless important for the prosody of the language. Thus the paper makes a methodological point about the importance of allophonic alternations for phonological theory. Our view of what counts as contrastive or allophonic, however, is to a large extent theory-dependent; therefore, the paper also emphasizes the importance of phonetic measurements when doing fieldwork.
Description
Keywords
Weledeh Dogrib, Yellowknives Dene First Nation, Northwest Territories, lexical phonology, consonant length
Citation
Jaker, Alessandro. 2010. Be careful what you throw out: Gemination and tonal feet in Weledeh Dogrib. In Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, & Daisy Rosenblum (eds.), Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas, 203-222. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
Extent
20 pages
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Table of Contents
Rights
Creative Commons Non-Attribution Share Alike License
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.