CV Phonology of the Syllable in the Oluwanga Language of Western Kenya

This paper describes the syllable structure of Oluwanga words within the framework of the Generative CV phonology theory which views the syllable as consisting of three tiers, the syllable tier, the CV tier and the segmental tier. It seeks to establish the extent to which the rules advanced by the CV phonology theory are applicable to the Oluwanga syllable system. The data used in the study was obtained from a personal elicitation by the author who is a native speaker of the dialect as well as through conversations with informants, who are competent native speakers of the language. Whereas Troyer (2007) observes that the Oluwanga syllable structure consists of five syllables, (V-, CV-, CVV-, NCV-, CGV-), this study argues that there are six syllable types, which are not necessarily a result of the application of the two rules postulated by Clements and Keyser (1983), namely, deleting the syllable initial C resulting into the V syllable and inserting the syllable final C resulting in the CVC syllable. The study contends that in Oluwanga, there is a V-only syllable with a clear grammatical function. There is also the CVC syllable found in words that have the glide consonant /j/ in the syllable boundary position. The study concludes that the preferred core association structure is that of one-to-one, followed by the many-to-one association, the latter being a syllable structure of the long vowels. Syllable transformations, which lead to the process of vowel insertion, occur in Oluwanga loan words