The phonology and noun morphology of Yi Kitʊlɛ, an Adamawa language of East-Central Nigeria

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The paper describes the phonology and nominal morphology of KItʊlε, an Adamawa language of the Tula-Waja group, spoken in East-Central Nigeria. KItʊlε has a restricted consonant inventory, marked by a loss of voicing contrast in most consonants. It has a system of ATR vowel harmony, which has begun to erode in many lexical items. There are three level tones plus rising and falling glides. The underlying system of nominal number marking is suffix alternation as with the other languages in the group, but this has undergone numerous alterations, in part due to the addition of prefix alterations, and fossilised suffixes which have been incorporated into the stem. Some of these then appear as infixes, although this is not the underlying system. A note on demonstratives is appended, which shows that these are not directly concordial, but which have a broad semantic logic.