Tigrinya
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Item Factors In The Affrication Of The Ejective Alveolar Fricative In Tigrinya(2019-08-13) Moeng, Emily; Carter, WilliamEjective fricatives are typologically rare sounds, attributable to the fact that they present an articulatory dilemma with contrasting demands for their fricative and ejective components. Several articulatory coping mechanisms have been observed across languages (Maddieson 1997; 1998). In the case of Tigrinya, Shosted & Rose (2011) find that the ejective alveolar fricative, /s’/, is affricated more often than not (/s’/ produced as [ts’]), proposing affrication to be another possible coping mechanism. This study assesses two possible factors affecting the rate or degree of affrication in Tigrinya: 1) the vowel environment surrounding /s’/ and 2) the lexical frequency of words containing /s’/. While we find no effect of lexical frequency, we find a significant effect of vowel context, with the lowest rate of affrication occurring following [i] and preceding [u]. We propose that this finding suggests that this environment, naturally aids the production of ejective fricatives due to vowel coarticulation, as the decreasing supralaryngeal volume over the duration of the fricative counteracts the loss of air due to frication.Item Clitics Or Agreement Markers: A View From Tigrinya Clausal Possession And Modal Necessity(2021-10-19) Gebregziabher, KeffyalewThis paper discusses the connection between clausal possession and modal necessity in Tigrinya. One of the unique traits of the two constructions is that they involve the same verbal element ʔalləw-, which hosts an object marker that tracks what appears to be a subject. Using a number of diagnostics, I first demonstrate that the object marker is an agreement affix and that it should be amenable to the operation Agree. Then, using several pieces of morphosyntactic evidence, I argue that the mismatch (the object marker tracking what looks like a subject) arises due to the fact that the DP the object marker references is a “quirky” argument is forced to remerge higher to escape an intervention effect. Finally, I present a syntactic analysis for clausal possession and modal necessity, claiming that ʔalləw- is the spell-out of the appl head that relates two arguments in Tigrinya.