An Analysis of the Phonological Processes Affecting Ndamba Vowels
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SAUT
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This study investigated the phonological processes affecting Ndamba vowels. The study aimed at
discovering different phonological processes that are applied in the Ndamba but affect vowels
only. The objectives of the study were;
i) To identify consonants and vowels in Ndamba
ii) To identify morpheme structure conditions of the Ndamba words
iii) To describe the phonological processes that affects vowels in Ndamba through using
rules.
The study was guided by the Generative Phonology theory that was propounded by Chomsky
and Halle (1968). The study employed a qualitative research approach in which documentary
review, Structured Interview and Introspective were used to collect data. A list of 300 words was
used to collect the required data for analysis in this study. Out of 300 words only 124 words were
purposefully used as examples in the analysis while the remained words have no phonological
changes. The findings of the study indicates that the Phonological Processes that Affects Vowels
in Ndamba are in two category which are Assimilatory Processes which includes Vowels
Lengthening which includes Compensatory vowel lengthening and Penultment vowel
lengthening, High Vowel Deletion, Nasalization, Glide formation, and Non Assimilatory
Processes which includes: Prothesis, Syncope and Apocope. The rules ordering in all these
processes are formulated with comments for elaboration. Moreover the study also shows
phonological processes, in particular vowel lengthening, vowel deletion and epenthesis do take
place in order to conform to the phonetic and the sequential Morpheme Structural Consonants
system MSC(s) of Ndamba, while glide formation takes place in order to conform to the
phonotactics conditions of the language. Furthermore, it has seen that most of the rules are
crucially ordered. The study concludes that the phonological processes do resemble on Bantu
languages however there are peculiar cases. The study recommends that some further research to
be carried out on phonological processes affecting Ndamba sounds particularly on supra
segmental features.
Keywords
Phonological Processes: Ndamba Vowels