Abstract
When the morphology of a language creates instances of successive vowels, these cases of vowel hiatus are often resolved or repaired. This paper presents a wide variety of instances where vowel hiatus is created within verbs in Rutooro, a Ugandan Bantu language. It is shown that five different strategies are employed to resolve vowel hiatus: deletion, gliding, diphthongisation, epenthesis, and lexical allomorphy. While some of these processes are largely phonological, there are a number of morphological factors which also play a role in determining which of the various strategies are employed. All of these are explored and discussed.
Highlights
Rutooro is a Bantu language spoken by approximately half a million speakers in Western Uganda
This paper adds to this growing body of literature by describing and analysing vowel hiatus resolution in the language
This /o-e/ sequence is resolved by epenthesis in the Habitual tense and by gliding in the nearly segmentally identical Subjunctive
Summary
Rutooro is a Bantu language spoken by approximately half a million speakers in Western Uganda. New data will be presented, showing that Rutooro employs no less than five different strategies to resolve vowel hiatus. While all of these (except the Final Vowel) can be vowel-initial or consonant-initial, that characteristic can limit which vowels can occur. Most of the rest of the Subject Markers are of the shape CV, where the V is either a high or low vowel (the mid vowels are not attested in this environment). The rest are of the shape CV and, like Subject Markers, only contain high or low vowels. As in many Bantu languages, Rutooro has a reflexive prefix (in this case /e-/) which always shows up in the same position as (and cannot co-occur with) Object Markers.
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