Izi Vowel Harmony and Selective Cyclicity

Abstract

In this paper, I provide an analysis of vowel harmony in Izi, an Igbo language spoken in the East - Central State of Nigeria. Using data from Meier, Meier, and Samuel (1975; hereafter MMB), I argue that harmony in complex verbal structures in Izi is inadequately accounted for within a level ordered model of lexical phonology (Kiparsky 1982, Mohanan 1982, etc...), claiming instead that harmony facts are best accommodated within a non-level ordered approach (cf. Halle and Vergnaud 1987, Halle and Kenstowicz 1991; Halle, Harris, and Vergnaud 1991). In sections 1 and 2, I provide a description of the general pattern of the [ATR]-based vowel harmony system in Izi and motivate [+ATR] as the only value of the feature [ATR] present at the level of underlying representation. In section 3, data are presented demonstrating the inadequacy of a level -ordered treatment of vowel harmony in verbal structures. Finally, in section 4, I propose an alternative, non-level ordered analysis that derives the attested harmony facts via cyclic rule application at a single level. Crucially, particular morphemes in verbal structures are claimed to undergo a pass of the cyclic rules prior to concatenation, a phenomenon which I call selective cyclicity.