Comparing vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona : an optimality theory analysis: a reply to Galen Sibanda

In our article (Kadenge and Simango 2014), we set out to present an Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) analysis of intralinguistic and interlinguistic variation of vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona. We note the variation between ciNsenga and chiShona with respect to how vowel hiatus is resolved in the verbal domain - specifically when the verb stem is V-initial: ciNsenga tolerates hiatus in those contexts whereas chiShona repairs the hiatus through the insertion of a glide (spreading). We account for these facts by proposing that ALIGN (ROOTVERB, L,ó,L) outranks both ONSET and ALIGNL-PSTEM in ciNsenga whereas in chiShona ONSET and ALIGNL-PSTEM outrank ALIGN (ROOTVERB, L,ó,L). We argue that it is the difference in the ranking of these constraints that gives rise to this interlinguistic variation.