Abstract:
Segmental assimilation, which affects features that are inherent in segments, is
generally situated within the phonology-morphology interface across languages,
including Hausa. Previous studies on Hausa reduplicative morphology have mainly
focused on segmental phonological modification, with little attention paid to
transparency and opacity in the context of assimilation. Thus, this study was designed
to examine the contextual nature of segmental assimilation in Hausa reduplicated
nouns and pluractional verbs, with a view to determining their domain, segments
involved and features that trigger or block the process.
John Goldsmith‘s Autosegmental Phonology was adopted as the framework, while the
descriptive design was employed. Three major cities in northern Nigeria (Sokoto,
Kano and Katsina) were purposively selected as representative of the three core Hausa
dialects. A paradigm of 20 reduplicative constructions were elicited from 45
purposively selected Hausa-literate native speakers; 15 from each dialect. This was
complemented with natural conversation. The data was transcribed and subjected to
morpho-phonological analysis.
Segmental assimilation in Hausa reduplicated nouns applies in the domain of adjacent
obstruents ([b, t, d, ɗ, k, ƙ, g, s, z]) and sonorants ([n, m, r, l, w]). Assimilatory
processes in this context are either total or partial and they mostly occur in
regressively with triggering features of place ([+lab], [+cor], [+pal]) and manner
([+cont], [+lat], [+nas]). This naturally results in the formation of morphosyntactic
reduplicated nouns in the language: dígí: → dígdígí: → díddígí ‗inquiry‘; múƙè →
múƙmúƙè → múmmúƙè ‗jaw‘and ɗírà → ɗírɗírà → ɗíɗɗírà ‗complicated diarrhea‘.
Assimilation also occurs in verb nominalisation to derive ‗deverbalised‘ adjectives
where non-palatal obstruent segments ([t, d, s, z]) synchronically become palatalised
([tʃ, ʤ]) as a result of the triggering effect of a suffixal vocalic feature ([+high]). In
Hausa pluractional morpho-syntactic verbs, segmental assimilation occurs more in the
domain of adjacent obstruents than sonorants and is usually triggered by the place
(labial, coronal, dorsal) and manner (continuant) features. This process results in the
formation of reduplicated verbs: dákà → dákdàkà → dáddàkà ‗pound repeatedly‘;
kámà → kámkàmà → kákkàmà ‗to catch repeatedly‘; dánnà → dándànnà →
dáddànà ‗to press repeatedly‘ and mánna → mánmànnà → mámmànnà ‗to paste
severally‘. The occurrence of segmental assimilation in the context of Hausa
reduplicated nouns and pluractional verbs, demonstrates feature-spreading. This
situation is exhibited in the language via association with both source segments in the
onset position of the reduplicant root-CVC and the target segments in the coda
position of the reduplicated CVC. Segmental assimilation in reduplicative domain in
Hausa admits off opacity without transparency.
Segmental assimilation in Hausa reduplicated nouns and pluractional verbs, is featuredriven, involving adjacency and opacity at the inter-morphemic boundary.
