Part of
The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form: Essays in honor of Jean LowenstammEdited by Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 12] 2014
► pp. 13–36
Edited by Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 12] 2014
► pp. 13–36
Lowering harmony in Bantu
An RcvP account
In this article I propose an analysis of lowering harmony in the Bantu languages Kikuyu and Kimatumbi. This analysis is carried out within a model called Radical cv Phonology (RcvP). Following Dependency Phonology, RcvP uses unary elements as primitives and dependency relations between elements when they occur combined in one phoneme. Following proposals in Government Phonology, my account for harmony postulates that harmony involves a licensing relation. A novel aspect of my approach is that harmonic alternations are represented in terms of elements that are variably present. A variable element is phonetically interpreted only if it is licensed by a non-variable element in an adjacent syllable.
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
van der Hulst, Harry
2017. Deconstructing tongue root harmony systems. In Sonic Signatures [Language Faculty and Beyond, 14], ► pp. 74 ff. 
van der Hulst, Harry
2018. Asymmetries in Vowel Harmony,
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