Unmasking Ghost Segments in South African isiNdebele.

Abstract

Abstract Ghost segments, also known as latent segments or floating features, are phonological segments which alternate with zero (Sibanda, 2011). Many languages contain these unique segments which are thought to be unpredictable, and one such language that has them is South African isiNdebele. This study discusses the behaviour of ghost segments evident in three phonological processes: high vowel elision, vowel hiatus resolution, and minimality effects. The theoretical objective is to explain the intricate relationship between ghost segments and markedness. High vowel elision is productive in Southern Ndebele, with the language undergoing mu-reduction and interconsonantal elision (syncope). This is one of the structural features that distinguish it from Northern Ndebele in which mu-reduction is not productive. Syncope is productive in both dialects and occurs during fast speech. Although occurring in fast speech, this process is limited and guided by phonological rules of the language. Vowel hiatus is a dispreferred configuration in isiNdebele. IsiNdebele makes use of five repair strategies to repair hiatus: glide formation, secondary articulation, glide insertion, vowel coalescence, and vowel elision. As is common in Bantu languages, isiNdebele enforces disyllabicity. Evidence of this requirement is gleaned from morphological structures such as the imperative, passive, and reduplication. IsiNdebele makes use of an epenthetic segment to ensure that subminimal forms are repaired. Using the findings from these three processes, ghost segment behaviour is analyzed, and a prediction is provided. It is shown that the ghost consonants in this language function as hero ghosts which rescue words from being ill-formed and thus repair markedness. Ghost vowels, except for the [i] in the imperative, behave as martyr ghosts that delete if their presence creates phonologically ill-formed words. This study aims to predict the behaviour of ghost segments and link their behaviour to markedness. The analysis is couched within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 2004) and some aspects of Feature Geometry (Clements and Hume, 1095). Optimality Theory provides different constraints which account for the strategies chosen by isiNdebele in repairing words. Furthermore, the ranking of constraints accounts for variation in the two dialects of isiNdebele. The results found in this study are compared to those in other Bantu languages to situate isiNdebele within the language family and contribute, in a small but significant way, to linguistic typology. Key words: Ghost segments, hero ghost, martyr ghost, markedness, Optimality Theory, Feature Geometry, constraint, input, output