Izi Language - Phonology - Syntagmatic Features

Syntagmatic Features

Syntagmatic features are related to the syntactic relationship between morphological or phonological units. In Izi, every syllable is marked with one or more features of pitch and quality. The three features of quality in Izi are palatalization, labialization, and neutral. They are regarded as syllable features for several reasons, but most importantly because they cause contrast between syllables rather than between individual phonemes. Palatalization is phonetically realized as strong palatal friction or as slight vowel fronting in the syllable. It occurs whenever a syllable margin is the palatal /j/, and sometimes when the margin is an alveolar consonant (with the exception of liquids) or a bilabial stop. For example, /jɔ̀/, meaning ‘to shake a rattle’ and /àpjà/, ‘a bird,’ are marked by the palatalization feature because they contain a syllable with a /j/ margin. The labialization feature is phonetically realized by the semivowel /w/ between a consonant margin and a vowel nucleus, as in /ákwɔ̀/, meaning ‘razor’. It can also occur when the syllable margin is a velar stop or nasal, or a liquid. The contrast in meaning is exemplified by comparing it to the word /ákɔ̀ /, which is translated as ‘story.’ Lip rounding occurs throughout the entire syllable of /ákwɔ̀/ which differentiates it from /ákɔ̀/. The neutral feature is simply the absence of the other two features of quality. There are no consonant margin restrictions other than the absence of /w/ and /j/ margins found in syllables marked by the labialization and palatalization features. An example of a neutral syllable is /únú/, which means ‘salt’