as a level high tone if it is not possible for it to spread. Syllable structure There are four syllabic forms in Goemai, as illustrated in the words below, with the relevant syllable(s) bolded. In syllables of the form CVVC, the VV represents a single long vowel sound. Syllables of the form N can occur when prenasalization of a sound manifests as a syllabic nasal. This is most common with the prenasalizing prefix /ⁿ-/, which acts as an adverbializer when affixed to verbs and as a locative when affixed to nouns. Morphology Goemai is classified as a mostly isolating language. The large majority of morphemes consist of a single syllable and the large majority of words consist of a single morpheme. Though infrequent, polymorphemic words are attested in Goemai and can be formed via a number of regular processes. Affixation is sometimes used to form words, although many affixes are found only in non-productive plural forms, and cliticization is more common. Goemai also uses reduplication and compounding to form words. Polysyllabic words are also less frequent than monosyllabic words, but are attested. Most commonly, polysyllabic words are of the form CV.CVC, where the first consonant may be subjected to secondary articulation, including prenasalization, labialization, or palatalization. There are three open word classes in Goemai: nouns, verbs, and adverbs. Nouns in Goemai generally lack morphological marking for case, number, gender, and noun class. There are several exceptions to this general trend. For example, several words relating to people and body parts are marked for number, as are most loanwords from the Hausa language. Nouns can be differentiated from other parts of speech based on their syntactic role in a sentence, and the types of modifiers they accept. In Goemai, verbs are a basic form that can never be derived from other parts of speech. There are therefore no verbalizing morphemes. Moreover, it is quite rare for verbs to join with any other morphemes, be they derivational or inflectional. While individual verbs are generally single morphemes, entire verb phrases can be marked for tense, aspect, or modality. In Goemai, some adverbs are underived base forms, whereas others are derived from verbs via affixation or cliticization with an adverbializer, as in the following example sentence: Underived adverbs can be further modified by nominal modifiers, but this is not possible for derived adverbs. Affixation Affixes are uncommon in Goemai, and those that exist are