Ghost segments in Sengwer nouns

Like other Kalenjin languages, Sengwer has a complex and understudied noun morphology which makes use of an abundance of affixes as well as word-internal tone and ATR changes. In addition, its nominal inflectional paradigms are teeming with unexpected stem-final segments which appear in certain morphological conditions but are absent in others. The phonological composition of this stem-final latent material is not predictable and varies from noun to noun—C, V, CV and even CCV are all possible. This paper provides a first description of the form and distribution of these segments as well as a novel analysis of their behaviour which explains much of the variation and irregularity seen in nominal inflection. In particular, this paper presents evidence that, although some of these latent segments are part of the root, others are part of suffixes and others still are morphologically active suffixes in their own right. In a departure from earlier studies, we argue that these segments should not be analysed as being inserted thematic material and are better understood as deleted ghost segments instead. Though the term ghost refers to a common phenomenon cross-linguistically, it has been characterised using different labels (e.g., latent, liaison, floating) depending on the tradition and the element affected. Building on Zimmermann’s (2019) definition of ghosts, we argue that these phenomena do not only occur to satisfy synchronic phonological constraints but can also be the result of historical processes no longer at work.