Phonetic versus phonological vowel length in Ciyao

Abstract

This article discusses the complexity of vowel length in Ciyao, a Bantu language spoken in Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. In this language, all vowel qualities show long/short phonetic opposition. The article analyzes the phonological factors that must be taken into account to predict which vowels surface as long vowels and which ones surface as short vowels. It combines two types of analysis, moraic framework and phonetic instrumentation validation of what is most likely attributable to Liberman & Pierrehumbert (1984), to show that the vowel shortening process, which is sensitive to the prosodie word domain, applies in a right-to-left gradient fashion conditioned by the rightmost long vowel.