Metaphony and the Theory of Gapping in the Phonology of Eleme

Abstract

This paper examines phonologically motivated gaps in the phonology of Eleme. The author follows Rice (2005), which ‘uses an approach to modeling gaps based on a tension between markedness constraints, faithfulness constraints and constraints which require the expression of morphological categories’. The author explores specifically vowel harmony in Eleme, arguing that the language has gaps in its phonological systems. The approach predicts that the same phonotactics problem may be solved by a repair in one phonological context and by a gap in another. This prediction is illustrated and further implications are explored.