‘Openness’ in Tigre: A Problem in Prosodic Statement

Abstract

An essential part of the prosodic approach is the abstraction of those features that may be regarded as syntagmatic. One feature of this kind is ‘vowel harmony’; prosodic analysis is well equipped to deal with this in terms of x2018;frontness’ and ‘backness’, or ‘openness’ and ‘closeness’, these being treated as characteristic of the entire word or of a considerable part of it.In the phonological analysis of Tigre a prosodic feature of this kind may be abstracted, the relevant phonetic observation being that there are sequences of open front vowels, and that within those sequences there are no half open central vowels. It is this feature that is referred to in the title as ‘openness’.