77 Finally, note that long vowels do not occur in word-final position, and they can
only occur in word-initial syllables if the syllable has an onset. See the following sections on conditioned and derived vowel length for discussion of both of these issues.
3.3.2 Conditioned vowel length
As previously mentioned, lengthening as a result of glide formation and NC sequences are two of the five sources of vowel length in Bantu languages Hyman 2003. This
section addresses conditioned lengthening which results from prenasalization of NC sequences as well as glide formation i.e. palatalization and labialization. This type of
lengthening, often referred to as compensatory vowel lengthening, has received a number of theoretical treatments, such as the classic work by Hayes 1989, as well as Wetzel and
Sezer 1986, which is a volume of papers on the subject. Clements 1986 is one of the papers from that volume, and it is of special interest since it focuses on Luganda, another
Bantu language which also exhibits both phonemic and compensatory lengthening. Root-internal prenasalization is common in Ikoma, as was already introduced in
§2.3.1. The second root consonant may be prenasalized, causing the preceding vowel V1 to be lengthened. Some examples of nouns are given in 61 many repeated from
28 above. 61
Lengthening by prenasalization
34
F, -
8 2
8 ́ 9
8 1
2 -
34
Recall that when tone is marked on long vowels, only the first vowel is marked. The tone bearing unit is the syllable, so long vowels do not have more than one tone.
78 Vowels preceding prenasalized consonants are generally pronounced with
noticeable lengthening, but it is not quite as long as phonemic length. A sampling of measurements in 62 below show averages for phonemically short and long vowels, as
well as lengthened vowels before prenasalized consonants. Only i vowels were measured in order to avoid natural length differences which correlate with different
vowel qualities. All measurements are from the root vowel of infinitive bisyllabic verb stems, all spoken in isolation by Speaker A. Two tokens were measured per verb.
62 Average duration of [i] vowels Speaker A
P P
P P
G 8 G 8
G 8 G 8
K K
K K
3 9
K K
K K
0+ 3 9
A K A K
A K A K
9 As the table shows, phonemically long vowels have on average more than twice the
duration of phonemically short vowels in an unconditioned environment. Prenasalized vowels have a duration in between the long and short vowels. This is very similar to the
duration measurements of Luganda vowels presented in Clements 1986. See also Hubbard 1994 for more discussion of similar issues.
When native Ikoma speakers are learning to distinguish phonemic vowel length for literacy purposes, they often hear many of these conditioned long vowels as being
long as well. Others, however, consider them to be not as long as phonemic long vowels, as the measurements above show. These differences in intuition apply for cases of
lengthening following glide formation as well. Because of the somewhat inconsistent nature of this lengthening, and because length is not contrastive in these conditioned
environments, conditioned vowel length is not transcribed in this thesis. Therefore,
79 though long vowels are written in the examples in 61 above and in 63 and 64 below,
conditioned vowel length is not transcribed elsewhere. Palatalization and labialization are also common in Ikoma see §2.3.2 and §2.3.3
above. In these cases, the following vowel is lengthened. Examples of palatalization are shown in 63.
63 Lengthening by glide formation palatalization
; ́ ;= F
; ́ 2
.: Examples of labialization are shown in 64 many repeated from 36 above.
64 Lengthening by glide formation labialization
9 2
. - 9=
896 2
An exception to conditioned lengthening is in word-initial and word-final syllables. For example, in the nouns in 65 below, the final vowels are not lengthened
even though they are following consonant-glide sequences. 65
Word-final vowels remain short
1 9 E 1 9
2 -9=
E -9=
; .8 ;
; ;=
;= :2
80 Similarly, the initial vowel of ‘leopard’ and ‘jackal’ is not lengthened even though it is
followed by a prenasalized consonant. Recall that throughout this thesis, length will only be written when it is phonemic or derived, but not conditioned.
3.3.3 Derived vowel length
