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Against vowel length in Tigrinya

Paper · 1997 · Eugene Buckley

Summary

Buckley asks whether modern Tigrinya still needs vowel length in its synchronic phonology. The language's seven vowels grew out of a Proto-Semitic system that contrasted short and long vowels. Several generative accounts keep length in the grammar: Pam 1973, and later Charm and Government work by Angoujard & Denais, Denais, Berhane and Lowenstamm. Their main reason is apparent shortening in closed syllables, as in f.sg. haddas versus pl. haddAs-ti 'new'.

The author reviews descriptive grammars, dictionaries and native-speaker judgments. He shows that the a~A alternations occur only in a narrow set of morphological contexts and treats them as templatic vocalism, which he sees as a leftover of older length. He then tests what a length-based analysis predicts across several phenomena:

  • word minimality,
  • syllable structure,
  • vowel coalescence,
  • word-final fronting,
  • guttural lowering,
  • low dissimilation.

In each case, a purely feature-based (qualitative) account is simpler or more accurate. The result supports the traditional view of Leslau and Ullendorff that Tigrinya vowels differ in quality only. More broadly, the paper is a case study in not carrying historical categories into a synchronic grammar.

Key points

  • Inventory and origins: Tigrinya has seven vowels (i, u, e, A, o, a, and high central ɨ).
    • Peripheral i, a, u come from Proto-Semitic long vowels.
    • e and o come from the diphthongs *ai and *au.
    • A comes from short *a.
    • ɨ is a merger of short *i and *u.
  • Duration data: the only phonetic measurements cited are Sumner's (1957), from a Tigrinya speaker reading Amharic words. They range from about 60 ms for [ɨ] to 125 ms for [o], and the supposedly long [u] (70 ms) is shorter than [A] (75 ms). Buckley notes that such differences also occur among phonologically short vowels in English.
  • Earlier proposals: Pam 1973 posits underlying quantity contrasts. Denais 1990 and others accept a qualitative seven-vowel system but add redundant length to historically long vowels.
  • Low Dissimilation: in infinitives of Type C and frequentative verbs (e.g., mi-giriraf), an infixed /a/ loses [+low] before another /a/ and surfaces as the default vowel [ɨ]. A length-based account must also delete a timing slot to get the same result.
  • Restriction to finite forms: Dissimilation does not apply in finite forms. One explanation the paper offers is that the infixed /a/'s form a single multiply linked autosegment, which does not trigger the rule.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. An alternation that survives only in a few morphological contexts is better stored as a template property than stated as a general rule, which would wrongly apply elsewhere.
  • I2. A measurable surface difference, like vowel duration, does not prove that a category exists in the grammar; that claim needs evidence from how the category actually behaves.
  • I3. One representational hypothesis is tested against many independent phenomena, and the analysis that keeps all of them simple wins.
  • I4. Underspecification plus a default value: removing a single feature leaves a vowel unspecified, and a fixed default fills it in, so no extra stipulation is needed.
  • I5. An element linked to two positions behaves as one unit, which explains why a rule fails to apply in some forms.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (tokens): Irregular English forms, such as vowel-change past tenses, could be listed as templates in the morphology rather than derived by over-general rules, with each one traceable to its listing.
  • I2 (learn): When silver data or a teacher model suggests a new feature distinction, require that it change some downstream decision before adding it to the representation.
  • I3 (tree): Competing UD dialect conversions or label schemes could be compared by how much they simplify several downstream rules at once, not by one benchmark.
  • I4 (tokens): Morphological features left unset by an analysis could be filled by declared defaults, keeping lemma and feature rules small and explainable.
  • I5 (frames): In coreference, treating one entity shared across several mentions as a single object can explain why it does not trigger constraints meant for distinct participants.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓University of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia · United States233 works · 65,583 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 4The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 17,450 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 17,296 worksPsychology · 1,649 worksExperimental and Cognitive Psychology · 930 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Semitic languages · 3,066 works

Cite

Cite as Eugene Buckley. 1997. Against vowel length in Tigrinya. Studies in African Linguistics 26.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.32473/sal.v26i1.107394

@article{buckley1997against,
  title = {{Against vowel length in Tigrinya}},
  author = {Eugene Buckley},
  journal = {Studies in African Linguistics 26},
  year = {1997},
  doi = {10.32473/sal.v26i1.107394},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.32473/sal.v26i1.107394}
}

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