ISSN 2360-7998
Abstract
Habitual aspect marking in African languages has garnered a great deal of attention in the extant literature, with languages exhibiting distinctiveness in marking habituality. A study by Delalorm (2016) claims that Sɛkpɛle marks habituality solely with the particle /á/. We observe that the particle /á/ is phonologically conditioned and inflects accordingly, hence the present study. We therefore give a detailed and systematic account of habitual aspect marking in the language. The paper's data sources include elicitation from 10 native speakers and the Sɛkpɛle Bible. From the perspective of Autosegmental phonology, we argue that the particle /á-/ has different allomorphic variantsː a, ə, and e, triggered by a phonemic feature of the first stem vowel. Our analysis reveals that the habitual marker /á-/ is generally associated with verb stems ending in /e, a, o, ɛ, ɔ/, while /e/ is linked to stems ending in /u, i/, and /ǝ/ tends to occur with stems that end in /ǝ/. These variations are closely linked to the phenomenon of vowel harmony present in the language. The findings thus expand on the phenomenon of habitual marking in Sɛkpɛle and show the influence of phonological forms on morphosyntax in GTM/Kwa languages.
Keywords: Sɛkpɛle, Advanced Tongue Root (ATR), Vowel Harmony, Habitual, Phonologically Conditioned