Mora augmentation in Lowland East Cushitic: implications for typology and studies of metrification

Abstract Moras play an important role in Lowland East Cushitic tone/accent assignment, but their contributions elsewhere in these languages’ grammars are not well established. This paper reports on the results of a survey of languages in this sub-group, showing two types of mora augmentation (i.e., the addition of a mora), both of which primarily involve vocalic moras. In some instances, the goal of augmentation is to satisfy the language’s overarching metrical well-formedness requirements. In others, its result is the creation of a particular template, albeit one entailed by a morpheme’s subcategorization requirements. These outcomes have a bearing on typological generalizations reported by Davis, Stuart & Isao Ueda. 2006. Prosodic vs. morphological mora augmentation. Lexicon Forum 2. 121–143 concerning expected correlations between a language’s impetus for augmentation (prosody vs. morphology) and its preferred means of implementation (via vocalic vs. consonantal moras). We argue that some augmentations in Lowland East Cushitic, despite being required by morphology, are best considered to be prosodically motivated, an outcome that bears on the predictions of the aforementioned typology. The presence of and motivations for these augmentations have further implications for our understanding of other aspects of Cushitic languages that are yet poorly understood by linguists, namely details of their prosodic and metrical structures.