148
5.1.2 Non-alternating prefixes
§5.1.1 describes a number of nominal prefixes which alternate between mid and high vowels. I argue that the underlying vowels of those prefixes are mid, not high. This
section discusses another set of prefixes—those which do not alternate. Their lack of alternation is expected based on the fact that they have different underlying vowels—
specifically, a and i, instead of underlying e and o like the alternating prefixes. As previously mentioned, prefixes with a are classes 2, 6, 9, 10, 12, and class 5 has
underlying i. Locative vowels in class 18 also do not alternate, but not because of their underlying form. I suggest that locative prefixes are in fact clitics and are outside of the
harmonic domain, as previously mentioned in §2.1.1. Therefore, these clitics are not considered further in this discussion.
All of the non-alternating prefixes are shown in 116 below. 116
Non-alternating prefixes TTTT
0000
3333 8
In the remainder of this section, I first deal with the high-vowel prefix e i- and then the low-vowel prefixes.
The only prefix with an underlying high vowel is e i-. Its lack of alternation is expected based on the prefix patterns described in §5.1.1 above. If [-ATR] vowels trigger
underlying mid-vowel prefixes to become high, we would not expect any alternation of a
149 prefix vowel which is underlyingly high. The lack of alternation of e i- is yet another
piece of evidence that the underlying height of the alternating prefixes is, in fact, mid, and consequently that the [-ATR] vowels trigger the alternation. Examples of the class 5
prefix with each root vowel are in 117 below. Note that the plural class 6 ama- is included as well, showing that neither prefix is subject to alternation. Two examples for
each root vowel are shown above for classes 5 and 6. Class 6 exemplifies the pattern found for all low vowel prefixes, which are the topic of the rest of this section.
117 Class 56 nouns with each root vowel
N N
N N
6 6
. 8
2 : 8
8 2 .
, ,
, ,
- ́
́ ́
́ ́1
́1 -
8 8
8 F
F 8
Four examples for each low-vowel noun class are shown in 118 below. As done with the prefixes in previous sections, I have given two examples each showing [+ATR]
vowels in the stem-initial V1 syllable, and two examples with [-ATR] vowels in the stem-initial syllable.
150 118
Low-vowel prefixes K B
K B K B
K B K B
K B K B
K B 9 9
. ,
́ 2 :
́ 0000
6 8 :
8 ́ ,
-- F
3333 =
́ - 6
2 1
: - 9 , -
. 8 ́
6 2
- Note that low-vowel prefixes are sometimes raised before i u. The amount of
raising is gradient, and depends significantly on the speaker, the word, and the specific class prefix. For example, in the class 2 prefix [a a-], the augment is never raised,
whereas the class prefix vowel is sometimes pronounced higher. Oddly, there is less tendency for raising with the class 9 and 10 prefixes. Note that gradient raising of a
occurs not only with prefixes, but it is sometimes perceptible in noun and verb stems as well. These issues are discussed in more detail in §6.7 below, where I give some sample
formant measurements and tentatively conclude that the raising is gradient and phonetic, not something which needs to be accounted for in the phonology.
5.2 Verbal prefixes
Kategori