STRUCTURE PRESERVATION AND POSTLEXICAL TONOLOGY IN DAGBANI

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses structure preservation and postlexical tonology in Dagbani. The article examines the issue of structure preservation (SP) as it pertains to the tonology of Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. The issue of interest is that Dagbani has a pervasive constraint forbidding contour tones throughout most of the tonology. By SP, a rule whereby a high tone (H) spreads onto a following low-tone (L) syllable automatically delinks that L to avoid the unacceptable contour. As a result, H–L contour tones ultimately surface in violation of SP. The key issue here concerns the place in Dagbani phonology at which SP has apparently turned off. Finally, as multiple applications of tone spreading have a cumulative effect, the strong domain hypothesis (SDH) predicts that an H tone could potentially spread as many syllables away from its underlying position as there are strata or levels within the language-particular phonology. Thus, a second issue in this study concerns the appropriateness of the SDH in predicting the observed tonal facts in Dagbani.