Vowel deletion in Àbèsàbèsì A case study of Èkìròmì

Abstract

Àbèsàbèsì¹ is an endangered Nigerian language spoken in nine settlements
within the Akoko North East and Akoko North West Local Government
Areas (LGA) of Ondo State by an estimated total of less than 7,000 speakers.
In this language, as in many other Benue-Congo languages, it is a common
case that two vowels meet across a word boundary. Among different
phonological processes that are triggered by the occurrence of two sounds
at morphological boundary are: segment harmony, deletion/elision,
assimilation, dissimilation, coalescence, velarization and palatalization.
This paper investigates the phenomenon of vowel deletion in Àbèsàbèsì for
an insight into the V1 # V2 vowel deletion in the language. Data collection
adopts a participatory model. The paper attempts a descriptive and rule base
account of the types of vowel deletion the language attests. For a better
understanding of the segment behaviour, Data collection and presentation is
limited to the Èkìròmì dialect as spoken in Ìkáràm. Èkìròmì attests two types
of V1 # V2 vowel deletion and certain environments where no vowel deletion
takes place. This paper attempts to clarify the distributional properties of
these two types of vowel deletion and to explain the cases where no deletion
takes place. It shows that V1 # V2 vowel deletion, in most cases, affects the
first of two consecutive vowels (V1) and proposes an explanation of the few
cases, where the second vowel (V2) is affected.

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¹Àbèsàbèsì is known as Akpes in literature and has the ISO-639-3 code ibe and the Glottolog code
akpe1248.