KALENJIN PHONOLOY AND MORPHOLOGY - A FURTHER EXEMPLIFICATION OF UNDERSPECIFICATION AND NONDESTRUCTIVE PHONOLOGY

Kalenjin, a Southern Nilotic language, has a harmony system normally a ssociated with the vowel system and specifically with the feature [ATR ]. This paper demonstrates that [ATR] is not an appropriate descriptio n of the phonetic correlates of the harmony system and that the system operates at least at syllable level, and in many cases at word level. In order to avoid having recourse to feature changing and deletion ru les phonological representation is conceived of as layered and radical ly underspecified in the lexical entry forms. Furthermore such represe ntations are non-segmental.