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Hi all, I'm a grad student in linguistics and I'm interested in Hausa phonology. More precisely, I want to learn more about the distribution of short and long vowels in the language. I consulted several studies on Hausa phonology and found out that long vowels cannot occur in closed syllables. In fact, there is a closed syllable shortening that creates morphological alternations of the type /gari:/ "town" vs. /garinsu/"their town/, where /i/ is shortened upon creation of a closed syllable (when the suffix is added). I was wondering if this shortening effect is marked in spelling, when using the ajami writing system. I read that this system marks the short/long contrast at least for i, a, u. So, I wanted to know if the spelling for /i/ in the example above alternates with the pronunciation. Also, I wanted to find out about the historical development of this shortening, i.e., whether there was any stage where long vowels were allowed in closed syllables. Any kind of help (references, etc) will be welcome. Thank you very much, Rebeka Campos University of Southern California -- Found something interesting about the U.S. on the Net? (e-mail message, website, or other resource?) Send it to H-USA! The rest of us would like to see it.
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