An optimality analysis of Òwórò Vowel Harmony
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Date
2013
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Abstract
Oworo, spoken by some people in the North-West of Lokoja Local
Government Area, Kogi State of Nigeria, is one of the Yoruboid languages
yet to be systematically and comprehensively phonologically researched.
This study examines the vowel harmony of Oworo using the optimality
theoretical (OT) framework with a view to establishing the descriptive and
explanatory adequacies of OT for Oworo data. The work shows the
application of OT to Oworo data giving a new perspective to the
phonological process of Oworo vowel harmony. Different from previous
generative theories, OT does not derive phonetic representation from
underlying representation via a set of rules. Rather, for any particular word,
many forms are generated at the outset, and the job of the theory is to select
from the many forms only that form that indeed occurs in the language.
Using OT, a systematic, comprehensive analysis of Oworo vowel harmony is
achieved, thus solving the unresolved problems of earlier theories
adequately. This is because linguistic well-formedness is a matter of
comparison or competition among candidate output forms. The analysis of
vowel harmony presented has shown that constraints are neither imposed
on inputs nor on the mapping between inputs and outputs. This study reveals
that right-edge harmony can be violated in Oworo vowel harmony system.
Harmony targets the rightmost "eligible" anchors and not necessarily the
"rightmost" anchor absolutely. The study has been able to establish the
descriptive and explanatory adequacies of OT account of vowel harmony for
Oworo data, over previous generative theories.
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An optimality analysis of Òwórò Vowel Harmony. African Education Indices 5 (1): 51-64, Published by Global Academic Group, Egypt. http://www.globalacademicgroup.com/journals/african