the university of chicago the phonology and ... - SIL International

The adjective == == == == ‘small’ is attested. This could be considered a case of
reduplication, but since it is always realized as bisyllabic, it cannot lend support to a CV
word pattern for adjectives.
There are a large percentage of adjectives which are of the V1CV1 shape:
(10) Sample V1CV1 adjectives in Mono
(F (F (F (F ~ (F (F (F (F ~ (F (F (F (F ‘tart’
~
‘heavy’ (Kamanda 1998: 671)
>K >K >K >K ~ >K >K >K >K ~ K>K K>K ‘black’
(FA( (FA( (FA( (FA( ~
—
A(FA( A(FA( A(FA( A(FA( ‘bad’
@ @ @ @ ~ @ @ @ @ ‘short’
=(@=( =(@=( =(@=( =(@=(
‘true’
=(J5( =(J5( =(J5( =(J5( ~ (J5( (J5( (J5( (J5( ‘good’
Many of these derive from the same base as a verbal form. For example, KBK
KBK
‘smelly’ and (BK (BK
(BK (BK ‘to be smelly, to rot’ come from the same root /BK BK BK/. BK This phenomenon
will be discussed in detail in Section 7.1.1.
Other nouns. Kinship terms, body parts, and plant and animal names are
subcategories of nouns which often exhibit novel phonological behavior. With respect to
word shapes, the only group which appears to have unique behavior are the kinship
terms. While all of the word shapes in (1) above are attested for kinship terms, well over
half of the kinship terms begin with a vowel, most with the vowel a. Despite this, only
three kinship terms, =(=( =(=( =(=( =(=( ‘brother’, C C C C ‘younger sibling’, and (C>( (C>( (C>( (C>( ‘older sibling’ exhibit
a V1CV1 word pattern, statistically much less than found amongst other Mono nouns.
Pronouns. Strictly speaking, pronouns are not a subcategory of the major
grammatical category of nouns. Rather, they are usually considered to be a type of
grammatical function word. However, pronouns in Mono exhibit similarities in behavior
to nouns with respect to word shapes, and so they will be discussed here.
Table 6.1 shows the forms of the pronouns in citation form, in subject position of
a clause, in object position in a clause, and in an associative noun phrase:
84