Linguists tend to believe that total complexity of human languages is invariable. In order to test this hypothesis empirically, we need to calculate the complexity in different domains of language structure: phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. In this paper I provide some guidelines for documenting tonal systems and evaluating their complexity. I…

This dissertation provides an account of Zulu reduplication within the derivational framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). New Zulu data challenge the idea of reified domains like the D(erivational)-Stem and Macrostem as relevant constituents for reduplication (Downing 1997, Hyman, Inkelas, and Sibanda 2009). Instead, a crucial distinction is…

Karbi is a Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken by half a million people in the Karbi Anglong district in Assam, Northeast India, and surrounding areas in the extended Brahmaputra Valley area. It is an agglutinating, verb-final language. This dissertation offers a description of the dialect spoken in the hills of the Karbi Anglong district. It is…

This dissertation describes the segments and tones of Soyaltepec Mazatec, an Oto-Manguean language of southern Mexico virtually undescribed in the literature with the exception of Pike (1956). The preliminary work done by Pike and subsequent analyses by Goldsmith (1990) and Pizer (1994) are reviewed giving evidence that the system is complex and…

Linguists generally acknowledge that there exists an inevitable inter-relationship between different levels of linguistic analysis--phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Various linguistic labels are used to describe such a link. In particular, there exists a bridge between the phonology and morphology of particular languages.…

This dissertation is a grammar of Rena (ISO bez), a Bantu language spoken in southwestern Tanzania by approximately 600,000 people. Bena is largely undocumented, and though aspects of Bena grammar have been described, there is no usable, detailed treatment of the Bena language. Therefore the goal of this dissertation is provide the first detailed…

This study suggests revisions to the segmental and tonal phonology of Kabiye following a reanalysis of consonants, vowels, and tones in the speech of 7 male native speakers. Acoustic investigations are also included to illustrate some phonetic aspects of segments and tone. Data were elicited through three speech styles--wordlists, short phrases,…