The morphology and phonology of metathesis in Amarasi

Morphology DOI 10.1007/s11525-017-9314-y The morphology and phonology of metathesis in Amarasi Owen Edwards1 Received: 6 April 2017 / Accepted: 12 October 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract I describe and analyse data from Amarasi, a language with morphological consonant-vowel metathesis. Depending on the phonotactic structure of the stem to which it applies, metathesis is associated with a number of other phonological processes including: vowel deletion, consonant deletion and two kinds of vowel assimilation. By proposing that Amarasi has an obligatory CVCVC foot in which C-slots can be empty all these phonological processes can be derived from a single process of metathesis and one associated morphemically conditioned process. I consider analyses other than the rule-based one adopted in this paper and show that they cannot account for all the data in a consistent, plausible way. Keywords Metathesis · Process morphology · Phonology · Timor 1 Introduction In this paper I describe and analyse the form of metathesis in Amarasi, an Austronesian language of western Timor. At its most simple, metathesis involves the reversal of the final consonant-vowel sequence of a word. One example is the word ‘seven’ which has the unmetathesised form hitu ["hit”U] and the metathesised form hiut ["hi.Ut”]. This example shows the pattern C1 V2 C3 V4 → C1 V2 V4 C3 , illustrated in (1) below. (1) c. × × × × C1V́2C3V4 b. × × ×2 × 22 2 C1V́2C3V4 h i t u h i t u h i u t a. × × × × B O. Edwards 1 Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands C1V́2V4C3 O. Edwards Metathesis is mostly straightforward with roots that instantiate all and only CVCV. However, roots with other shapes also frequently occur in Amarasi. Depending on the phonotactic structure of the word to which it applies, metathesis is associated with a number of other phonological processes including: vowel deletion, consonant deletion and two kinds of vowel assimilation. Some of these different processes are illustrated for different roots of different shapes in Table 1. Such forms all belong to the same paradigm and serve an inflectional purpose, as discussed briefly in Sect. 2.2. Table 1 Phonological process associated with metathesis in Amarasi Shape U-form M-form CV→VC C#→∅ /a/ → V1 V→[α HIGH] V#→∅ VCV# hitu → hiut  VCVC# muPit → muiP  VCa# nima → niim  VCV# ume → uim  VVC# kaut → kau VVCV# aunu → aun VVCVC# nautus → naut ‘seven’  ‘animal’  ‘five’  ‘house’   ‘papaya’  ‘spear’  ‘beetle’ From the examples given in Table 1, it is clear that many of the forms before and after the arrow do not differ only in the order of the final CV sequence. For this reason, I refer to forms paradigmatically equivalent to hitu ‘seven’ as the ‘U-form’ and forms paradigmatically equivalent to hiut ‘seven’ as the ‘M-form’.1 Under a process based model of morphology and an autosegmental model of phonology, by positing an obligatory CVCVC foot in which C-slots can be empty, all the phonological processes in the formation of the M-form arise from a single rule of metathesis at the CV tier, an associated morphemically conditioned rule, and the general phonotactic constraints of Amarasi. This analysis is superior to alternate analyses under different frameworks, such as prosodic morphology or purely concatenative morphology, neither of which can account for all the data in a consistent, typologically plausible manner. This paper proceeds as follows. In Sect. 2 I describe the language background and the prosodic and phonotactic structures of Amarasi. Importantly, in most forms, such as hitu ["hit”U] → hiut ["hi.Ut”] ‘seven’, M-forms differ only in the order of the final CV sequence—there is no vowel coalescence, diphthongisation, or difference in stress. In Sect. 3 I present the data and describe the different phonological processes by which the M-form is formed in Amarasi. In Sect. 4 I propose a unified analysis under which all these processes are derived from a single morphological process of metathesis at the CV tier. In Sect. 5 I consider alternate analyses which have been 1 The labels ‘U-form’ and ‘M-form’ should be taken as the names of two different morphological forms, similar to the terms ‘complete phase’ and ‘incomplete phase’ coined by Churchward (1940) in his discussion of Rotuman metathesis. The labels ‘U-form’ and ‘M-form’ can be taken as formal or functional abbreviations. Formally, the M-form is the metathesised form while the U-form is the unmetathesised or underlying form. Functionally, in the syntax M-forms mark modification and in the discourse U-forms mark unresolved events or situations. The morphology and phonology of metathesis in Amarasi Fig. 1 Location of Uab Meto and Amarasi in Timor proposed for typologically similar processes. I show that while such analyses can account for some of the data, they cannot account for all of the data in Amarasi. This means that Amarasi presents a true case of morphological metathesis in which metathesis alone—without any additional phonological difference—can be the only expression of a morphosyntactic category. 2 Background Amarasi is a member of the Uab Meto (a.k.a. Dawan[ese], Timorese, Atoni) cluster of languages/dialects spoken on the western part of the island of Timor. The term ‘Amarasi’ is used by speakers as a label used for the people, speech, and area of the old kingdom of Amarasi. Speakers identify four ‘dialects’ of Amarasi: Kotos, Ro'is, Tais Nonof and 'Hero'.2 The dialect which is the focus of this paper is Kotos Amarasi, with occasional reference made to Ro'is Amarasi when it provides comparative insights. The location of Kotos Amarasi and Ro'is Amarasi within the Uab Meto cluster is shown in Fig. 1. There are differences in the forms and functions of metathesis between different varieties of Uab Meto, different dialects of these varieties, and even between individual villages of a single dialect. Unless stated otherwise, the data presented in this paper come from Kotos Amarasi as spoken in the present day village (desa) of Nekmese' by inhabitants of the historic hamlet (kampung) of Koro'oto. 2 Current work indicates that Tais Nonof is a label for the speech of those originally living along the coast of the Amarasi area, this includes people whose speech is mst similar to Kotos Amarasi and those whose speech is most similar to Ro'is Amarasi. From a comparative perspective, Kotos Amarasi is phonologically more closely related to other varieties of Uab Meto than it is to Ro'is Amarasi (Edwards 2016c). The term 'Hero' is applied by Amarasi speakers to Helong; a distinct people group with a distinct language, but this term may also be a distinct variety of Uab Meto in the Amarasi area. O. Edwards The data in this paper were collected by the author based on a total of six months fieldwork. These data primarily consist of a dictionary of more than 2,000 uniqu (...truncated)