Featural foot in Bambara

Abstract

The Bambara foot is represented as a rhythmic unit which can be disyllabic or monosyllabic. Foot-parsing is both segmentally and morphologically conditioned. A foot can coincide with a morpheme or be smaller than a morpheme, but it cannot include more than one morpheme. The main factors for foot-parsing are: types of initial consonants, types of internal consonants and vocalic combinations; directionality (left to right) is a secondary factor. Segmentation into feet is relevant for the realization of tone. Disyllabic feet are subdivided into two types, heavy and light; heavy feet have a long vowel in the initial syllable, while light feet have a short vowel in this position which is susceptible to elision (depending on phonotactics). It seems unnecessary to postulate stress in Bambara. The views of previous researchers on the Bambara foot are critically analyzed.

Tonal head marking in Mande compounds: endpoint neutralization and outliers

“…The precise realization of W2 depends to some extent on tonal context; W2 typically surfaces H, though it may lower after a L W1 when the compound is followed by another word beginning with H (or sometimes even before a pause). This variation is arguably a reflex of the "settling" effect discussed above; see Vydrin (2020) for further discussion of this variation. Example (13e) shows that the same outcome applies to compounds formed by more than two input words.…”

Phonological and acoustic properties of ATR in the vowel system of Akebu (Kwa)

“…The syllabic nasal /ŋ/ can bear a tone different from the tones of adjacent syllables. Akebu also manifests the so-called featural foot – a phonotactic unit with a considerable degree of internal phonetic and phonological cohesion in terms of vocalic, consonantal and tonal restrictions (Green 2015; Vydrin 2020). Monosyllabic (V, ŋ, CV), disyllabic (VV, ŋŋ, CVV, CV 1 V 2 , C 1 C 2 VV, CVŋ, C 1 C 2 Vŋ, C 1 VC 2 V) and trisyllabic (CV 1 V 2 V 2 , C 1 VC 2 Vŋ) feet are attested.…”

Vers un dictionnaire orthographique bambara

“…Sur le pied caractéristique en bambara, voir(Vydrin 2020a). 4 Dans l'orthoraphe malienne du bambara, les tons ne sont pas marqués.…”