Tonal Interactions in Nuer Nominal Inflection
Siri Gjersøe
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004801
September 2019
This dissertation is on the tonal system of nouns in Nuer, a Western Nilotic language. Tone in Nuer is an understudied topic and has mostly been ignored in previous studies. This dissertation demonstrates that tone has a primary role in nominal morpho-phonology involving tonal interactions of three components: lexical tone, L tone restrictions, and inflectional tone. I offer a stratal OT analysis of this based on a new assumption of bidirectional affectiveness. The empirical parts of this dissertation give evidence of tone in Nuer and its phonetic cues.