Kalenjin phonology and morphology : A further exemplification of underspecification and non-destructive phonology

Kalenjin, a Southern Nilotic language, has a harmony system normally associated with the vowel system and specifically with the feature [ATR]. This paper demonstrates that [ATR] is not an appropriate description of the phonetic correlates of the harmony system and that the system operates at least at syllable level, and in many cases at word level. In order to avoid having recourse to feature changing and deletion rules phonological representation is conceived of as layered and radically underspecified in the lexical entry forms. Furthermore such representations are non-segmental.