Kɔnni Vowel Feature Spread across Consonants Michael Cahill SIL International 1. Introduction Kɔnni is a Gur language of northern Ghana. The vowel phoneme inventory is listed below. For place features, back vowels will be considered [dorsal], front vowels as [coronal], and /a/ as placeless. (1) +ATR –ATR i u ɪ ʊ e o ɛ ɔ a In this paper, I demonstrate two cases of spreadings of vowel features across consonants in Kɔnni. In the first, the [dorsal] feature of a vowel spreads across a [dorsal] consonant, so that /i, ɪ/ becomes [u, ʊ]. In the second, a [coronal] feature of a vowel spreads across a [coronal] consonant, so that /a/ becomes [ɛ]. These processes have different conditions on them. Crucially for both, however, the consonant across which the feature spreads must be specified for that same feature. Rather than the consonant blocking the spread, as might be expected in some models of Feature Geometry, the consonant must participate in these spreadings. When combining discussion of [+ATR] and [–ATR] vowels of the same place, I use capital letters, thus /I/ = /i, ɪ/, and /U/ = /u, ʊ/. 2. [Dorsal] spread across dorsal consonants 2.1. Verbs All polysyllabic Kɔnni verbs have /I/ as the final vowel in citation form. Almost all trisyllabic verbs have /I/ as the second vowel as well. 1 (2) disyllabic verbs trisyllabic verbs wasɪ ‘greet, thank’ giligi ‘be round’ yuori ‘open’ gbalɪgɪ ‘be tired’ digi ‘cook’ hagɪrɪ ‘be strong’ maagɪ ‘write, draw’ kpegiri ‘break in two’ Consequently, one characteristic of Kɔnni verbs is that there is only one distinctive vowel per verb, i.e. V1. Others are generally /I/ (Cahill 2000). However, a few verbs disobey this pattern, in that they do not have /i, ɪ/ as V2. All six are trisyllabic verbs, and all have /U/ as V2. These all also have /U/ as V1, and /g/ as C2: (3) Exhaustive list of Kçnni verbs with /U/ as V2 bʊgʊrɪ ‘learn’ mʊgʊsɪ ‘suck’ ¯ʊgʊsɪ ‘sharpen’ suguri ‘wash’ sʊgʊrɪ ‘wake’ tuguri ‘be bright’ 1 Although Kɔnni is a tonal language, tone on verbs is not distinctive (Cahill 2000), and will not be marked in this paper. Citation forms of verbs have a LH pattern (LLH on trisyllabic verbs). Tone on nouns will be marked. © 2009 Michael Cahill. Selected Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, ed. Masangu Matondo et al., 17-25. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.