Ka, tra, na and Consonant-final Roots in Malagasy: Evidence in Genitive Formation and Reduplication

Abstract

In Malagasy, most words have penultimate stress, yet words
ending with “weak syllables” (i.e. ka, tra and na) usually have
antepenultimate stress. Some may argue that antepenultimate
stress appears because those “weak syllables” are invisible in
stress assignment, but extrimetricality assumption cannot explain
the fact that certain words ending in ka, tra, na also have
penultimate stress. This paper aims to test the hypothesis that
Malagasy words with antepenultimate stress have a consonantfinal
root, and penultimate stress is assigned before the
epenthesis of the final vowel a in the derivation from the
underlying forms to the surface forms of those words. Given that
the consonant-final root hypothesis has not been tested in
morphologically complex words, other than suffixed verbs, this
paper investigates the behaviors of nouns and adjectives with ka,
tra, na endings when they undergo possessive construction and
reduplication. I show how the consonant-final root hypothesis
could correctly predict the surface forms of morphologically
complex words that are derived from antepenultimately stressed
words. I also examine the phonological processes that words with
antepenultimate stress might undergo when forming
morphologically complex units.