Review of Kadenge & Simango's 'Comparing vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona: An Optimality Theory analysis'

Abstract

1. Summary The article provides a formal comparative analysis of repair strategies used to resolve vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and chiShona within the Optimality Theory framework and shows that while vowel hiatus resolution is categorical in chiShona, it is domain-specific in ciNsenga. The analysis shows that vocalic hiatus is generally dispreferred and the two languages use similar repair strategies in most cases to resolve it. These include glide formation, secondary articulation (labialisation) and deletion. Where the repair strategies differ the variation is attributed to the fact that hiatus resolution is sensitive to phonology and morphosyntax, hiatus resolution strategies applying differently depending on the phonological and morphosyntactic context. In fact ciNsenga permits vowel hiatus in these cases while Shona resolves it through spreading (glide epenthesis). After the introduction, the article begins by providing some background about the two languages, including the regions where they are spoken, and their morphosyntactic structures particularly regarding verbs and nouns. This is followed by a brief sketch of the Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004, among others), thereby laying the foundation for the analysis that follows. The first of the two main parts of the article focuses chiefly on similarities in repair strategies used in resolving vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and chiShona. There are three important subsections that focus on glide formation, secondary articulation (labialisation) and vowel elision. In each subsection, relevant constraints are discussed and there are tableaux illustrating the points considered. A wide variety of data from both chiShona and ciNsenga is presented, with supporting data from other languages such as Shimakonde, Ivie and Luganda. The second main part deals with vowel hiatus across the prosodic stem boundary where the two languages exhibit contrasting behaviour. While ciNsenga tolerates vowel hiatus across the prosodic stem boundary chiShona does not. For both ciNsenga and chiShona the three vowel hiatus resolution strategies (glide formation, secondary articulation and vowel elision) that apply to examples in the preceding section are blocked. ChiShona, which does not tolerate vowel hiatus, resolves the problem through glide epenthesis. To account for the tolerance of vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and glide epenthesis in