An examination of the segmental phonology of Haya

Tanzania is going through a linguistic revolution. Swahili is quickly becoming an effective national (and official) language. English is reaching more and more people every year. Other foreign languages especially French are being taught in school. There is now the proposal of introducing portuguese. At no point, however, is there is no official public policy to promote or standardise them. The result is that in addition to normal internally motivated changes, they are acquiring foreign elements rapidly. Consequently, they are slowly but effectively becoming things of the past.While these languages have probably little or no role to play in matters of national politics, they remain the linguistic heritage of a majority of people as it will take some decades before Swahili becomes the linguistic heritage of all Tanzanians. It seems imperative, therefore, that every attempt should be made to ensure that different aspects of these languages be documented before they either undergo complete extinction or their real nature is obscured by accelerated borrowing. In any case Swahili depends heavily on the indigenous languages for its own development. It is these languages “upon which Swahili leans for its major borrowings” Khamisi (1974:288). The present work was embarked upon because of the foregoing considerations. It is intended to document one aspect of one of Tanzania’s indigenous languages. Consequently, it deals less with the justification or otherwise of current theories in linguistics but rather employs these theories to describe the given aspect of the language. It is hoped that the facts, data and arguments presented here will facilitate and form the basis for the continuing examination of the more theoretical aspects. The first part of Chapter one introduces the reader to the language. In Part Two are discussed problems of classifying the consonantal and vocalic segments of Haya. Part Three examines the nature of the syllable. Finally, Part Four deals briefly with the role of tone in the language. Chapter Two discusses the kinds of Haya segments and their classification. Part One identifies the segments and classifies them in traditional terms (i.e. place and manner of articulation). Part Two assigns features (mainly of the Chomsky and Halle variety) to the segments. Part Three examines redundant feature specifications. Finally, Chapter Three discusses the phonological processes that take place in Haya, Part One being concerned with consonants and Part Two with vowels. Footnotes to all the chapters are given immediately after Chapter Three. There are three appendices. Appendix A gives possible phonetic intervocalic occurrences of consonants. Appendix B gives the class (concord) markers in Haya. Appendix C is a summary of all the rules discussed in the text and is meant to facilitate quick reference to these rules.