Morphophonological Processes in the Noun: a Case Study of the Benadiri Dialect of Somali

Abstract

This study is a descriptive research of the morphophonological processes involved in the noun formation in the Benadiri dialect. The study aimed at describing the inflectional morpheme used in the plural formation as well as the derivational processes in nouns of this dialect. It also described the morphophonological processes that affect phonemes in plural formation. It explained the tonal changes involved in plural formation and gender specification. Data were collected through audio recording speakers of the Benadiri dialect. The informants were recorded using a Digital Voice Recorder of the reseacher’s mobile phone. The data were recorded during Skpe sessions between the reseacher and the informants. Data were transcribed phonetically and tone was also marked. The researcher was able to identify various morphological and phonological processes emerging from the plurals formed. The research was done within the framework of Lexical Phonology and Auto-segmental Phonology. Thus, the study adopted an eclectic approach with Lexical Phonology as main theory and Autosegmental Phonology as the minor one. The study established that there were a number of inflectional and derivational morphomes that were suffixed to nouns. It also established the existance of consonant weakening, consonant substitution, consonant insertion, consonant elision, vowel deletion and vowel lowering. The researcher also confirmed that Benadiri dialect has a complex morphology because of the many inflections, but this also makes it richer because it has different ways of forming plurals.