A Morphophonological Analysis of Polar tone in Gudi and Yaya Dialects of Ngamo language

Abstract

This paper discusses the polar tone in Gudi and Yaya dialects of Ngamo language within the pantheoretical framework of phonological boundary. The theory is used along with other devices in
classical generative phonology to give a satisfactory theoretical framework. The paper reveals
that genitive bound morpheme ‘a‒’(masc.), ‘an‒’ (fem) and ‘ana‒’ (pl.) with low tone, meaning
‘one/those who does/do…, one/those who has/have… in Gudi dialect respectively, are polar to the
tone of base word initial position. In this situation, tone polarity necessitates change of low tone of
base word initial syllable to high tone. Whereas the equivalent genitive bound morpheme ‘bob‒’
(masc.), ‘an‒’ (fem.) and ‘ana‒’ (pl.) in Yaya dialect has a flexible tone depending on the position
of a tone of word initial syllable to make it polar. The paper also found out that noun+noun
compound is another form of polar tone as in noun-base ‘bo’ (masc.) meaning ‘a mouth,
language, sharpness, border or edge’ with a fixed low tone in Gudi dialect been attached to the
preceding word initial syllable. This process changes the tone of the base word initial to be high
where it is low in order to meet Ngamo phonological rules of tone polarity in the derived form.
Unlike in Yaya dialect, whereas the tone variation affects the noun-base word ‘bo’ only.