Extending the data

Verbs are subject to these same rules, as some additional data will show, and an analysis of verbs will provide additional support for aspects of this analysis. Hehe is a tone language, and while we have not been concerned with accounting for tone (and have not marked tones), in the following data, tones are marked, and can be predicted by rule. In analyzing these data, we want to account for the placement of the high tone (H), which is marked with an acute accent.

The morphology. These data indicate that all verbs begin with kú or something derivable from /kú/ by the rules already motivated, thus we assume that kú- is an inflectional prefix. In addition, all verbs end with the vowel a, which is probably a morpheme since it is unlikely that every root would end in exactly the same vowel. The stem of the word for ‘milk’ is probably -kam-. Various grammatical relations are expressed by suffixes standing between the stem and the suffix -a, such as -il- ‘for,’ -an- ‘each other,’ -j- ‘make,’ -w- ‘passive’: the objects ‘us’ and ‘them’ are marked by the prefixes -tu- and -va- between the prefix kú and the verb stem.

Phonological rules. Looking at the last three roots, which are vowel-initial, the prefixes kú-, tu-, and va- are subject to the rules motivated on the basis of nouns, where /u/ becomes [w] before a vowel, but deletes after a consonant and before a round vowel (so, /ku-oogopa/ ! kwoogopa ! [kóogópa]); the sequence vo becomes wo (/ku-va-oogopa/ ! kuvoogopa ! [kúwoogópa]). The change of /v/ to w is also seen in examples such as kútowá and kúlawá, coming (apparently) from /ku-tov-w-a/ and /ku-lav-w-a/.

The rule of v-rounding would derive kútowwá and kúlawwá, and the actual phonetic forms can be accounted for based on that intermediate form by Glide Degemination.

One additional segmental process of vowel harmony is motivated by the above examples. The benefactive suffix retains its underlying high vowel in forms such as kúkam-íl-a, kúsan-íl-a, and kúfwiim-íl-a, but that vowel assimilates in height to a preceding mid vowel in examples such as kútov-él-a, kwéend-él-a, and kóogop-él-a. This motivates the following vowel harmony rule:

Regarding tone, most examples have an H tone on the second-to-last vowel of the word (this may be the second part of a long vowel in the penultimate syllable, or the only vowel of a short penultimate syllable), which can be accounted for by the following rule.

In some verbs, this H is missing – see kúkama, kúsana, kútova. Applying this tone assignment rule to these forms would result in outputs such as *kúkáma, *kúsána, *kútóva, with H tones on adjacent vowels. Since our examples contain no cases of consecutive H-toned vowels, we may assume a rule along the following lines.

What about the columns with the suffixes -j- ‘make’ and -w- ‘passive,’ which have word-final H, not penult H? We expect *kúkalaángwa. But if these two suffixes are underlyingly i and u, then the underlying form of kúkalaangwá would be /kúkalaang-u-a/. H tone would be assigned to the penultimate vowel under that assumption, giving kúkalaangúa. However, we already know that there is a rule of glide formation which would turn u and i into w and y before vowels, a rule which has obviously applied in these forms. Since only syllabic elements can bear tones, the tone on the penultimate vowel apparently shifts to the final syllable, where it can be pronounced.