Vowel harmony in Etulo: A preliminary investigation

Cecilia A Eme, Adaobi Ngozi Okoye

Abstract


The paper is a preliminary investigation of vowel harmony in
Etulo, a minority language spoken in central Nigeria. The Etulo
language belongs to the Idomoid group of the New Benue Congo
language family. The researchers’ contact with the Etulo people
exposed us to the need to examine the vowels of Etulo and their
combinatory possibilities in the words of the language. This is
principally with a view to finding out if there is vowel harmony in
Etulo, and if there is, to ascertain the phonetic feature on which
the harmony hinges and the permitted combinations of the vowels
in words and across morpheme boundaries. The data for this
study were elicited from the native speakers of the Etulo language
resident in Adi, Buruku Local Government Area of Benue State,
Nigeria using a modified Roger Blench’s 1000 wordlist. The data
were transcribed based on the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA).The findings reveal that there is vowel harmony in Etulo.
The study shows that the language operates [ATR] vowel
harmony. From our investigations, Etulo has seven phonemic
vowels /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/ which comprise four [+ATR] vowels /i e o
u/ and three [-ATR] vowels /ɛ a ɔ/. The low vowel /a/ is an
opaque vowel and as such neutral to vowel harmony, as it cooccurs
with all Etulo vowel phonemes. Furthermore, prefixes of
infinitives and gerunds also show evidence of vowel harmony

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