Gemination and Morphophonological Organisation in Kisa

Gemination is a linguistic property that abounds in the phonology of natural langauges as a language universal property. All language, however, do not display this phonological aspect in the same way. Language specific variations exist, in which case, languages of the world uniquely exhibit gemination. Though a phonological phenomenon, gemination, in natural langauges, could be seen to interact with morphological aspects of language in the Phonology-Morphology interface. Kisa, a Bantu language spoken in western Kenya and one of the seventeen Luhya languages, exhibits phonemic geminates, albeit very few. Cases of two adjacent identical consonants word internally as a result of affixation and vowel syncope are common in this language, and vary depending on the type of the consonants in question. Nonetheless, empirical studies on such language specific unique behaviour of geminates in Kisa and evidence of the morphology – phonology interface are rare. The study to which this paper is based investigated the behaviour of derived geminates in Kisa basing on natural speech data generated by native speakers of Kisa and adopting a descriptive analytic research desingn. The study looked into how morpho phonological variability and phonetic detail relate to gemination in Kisa. The results show that gemination occurs tautomorphemically and heteromorphemically and that not all consonants geminate. Gemination depends, on the one hand, the type of consonant in question and, on the other hand, the type of affix in question and segmentability of the affix. Kisa, is shown to have morphological geminates, discerned from their morphological properties. Kisa morphological geminates, however, behave like phonological geminates based on the phonological properties they portray. The analysis shows a distinction between phonological rules and phonetic implementation rules and that the strength of morphological boundaries impacts the gemination properties of certain affixes and sounds, providing evidence of the morphoplogy - phonology interface in Kisa.