International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research (IJELLR)

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Alternation of the Velar Phonemes of the Tera Language

Abstract

In the current study, I examine the alternations that the velar fricatives of Tera [k g x ɣ ŋg] undergo focusing on phonological and morpho-phonological conditioned alternations. Secondary data was used in the study and also my intuition as a native speaker of Tera. Phonologically conditioned alternations showed that the velar phonemes of Tera undergo labialization and the labialized forms [kw gw xw ɣw ŋgw] are realized as a result. These are however not allophones of the velar phonemes as minimal pairs can be found for all the velar phonemes and labialized velar phonemes, for instance, /g/ in gari [ɡari] ‘overripe’ and /gw/ in gwari [ɡwari] ‘to grow’. Thus, they are considered separate phonemes. For morpho-phonologically conditioned alternations, labialized velar phonemes are not realized differently by their environment in compound words. In definite plurals, the velar phoneme [k] in plurals alternates with the labialized velar phoneme [kw] in definite plurals.    

Keywords: Alternations, Morpho-Phonological Condition, Phonological Condition, Tera, Velar Phonemes

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This work by European American Journals is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License

 

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Email ID: editor.ijellr@ea-journals.org
Impact Factor: 7.79
Print ISSN: 2053-6305
Online ISSN: 2053-6313
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37745/ijellr.13

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