Final vowel alternations in Hausa verbs

A prosodic account

Abstract

Hausa is a Chadic language spoken primarily in southern Niger and northern Nigeria. Its verbs can end in up to three different final vowels. Hausa scholars analyze this ternary opposition as conditioned by the following word in the sentence. For example, the verb say 'to buy' ends in a long a when used sentence finally, in a long e preceding direct object clitics and in a short i preceding nouns: ita cèː zân sàyaː 'that's the one I'll buy.'; zân sàyeː tà 'I'll buy it.'; zân sàyi rìːgâɽ 'I'll buy the gown.' (Jaggar 2001: 213). These contexts have been termed A, B and C respectively. Other data are difficult to account for just by taking the part of speech to the right of the verb into account. Both A- and C-forms are found preceding object clauses, with some clause embedding verbs even allowing either form (f.e. hangaː/hangi 'to see', Furniss 1991: 97). Modal particles may intervene between a verb and a pronominal object, blocking the application of the B-form in the process. In order to derive these and other patterns better than previous syntactic approaches, I pursue the hypothesis that it is the prosodic context that determines the form of the verb's final vowel: If the verb is followed by any phonological material within the same phonological word – as is the case only with direct object clitics – it takes the B-form; if other phonological material follows the verb within the same phonological phrase, it takes the C-form; if nothing follows the verb within the same phonological phrase, the verb will be in its Aform.