characteristics of bantu languages pdf

There is much work that remains to be done on cross-linguistic, intra- and inter-speaker variation of typologically unusual sounds such as clicks and whistling fricatives. Undoubtedly, studies of intonation and prosody in Bantu languages will continue to increase in number. . , Haacke, W. H. G. . New York: Harcourt Brace. Acoustic evidence for tongue root retraction of vowels in several Bantu languages has been provided by Starwalt (2008). Similar segments are very rare in the worlds languages, but do occur in the Dagestanian language Tabasaran (Kodzasov & Muravjeva 1982). Ladefoged Rodekuhr , ), Studies in Compensatory Lengthening. Waveform of the middle part of the Tonga S62 word // father, illustrating the increasing amplitude of voicing during the implosive. 13: 3972. (2013) Dissimilation by Surface Correspondence in Aghem Velarized Diphthongs. (1999b) Tone Association and F0 Timing in Chichewa. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The possible variations are thus very numerous, and many different categories of individual clicks are found when all the languages which use them are considered (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996). In (Available online at. & A wide range of means of marking question prosody have been noted for Bantu languages. Belgian Journal of Linguistics in the word /ko/ avarice has a higher F2 (above 1000 Hz), and the higher formants are much more prominent than those of /o/. Figure 3.25 Clements, G. N. In Journal of West African Languages In both languages the oral stop duration in voiced prenasalised stops is very short, so the total segment duration is not so very different from that of a simple nasal. The palatal click type may be found as a variant of // used in child-directed speech in Zulu and Xhosa (Bradfield 2014: 27). Bako is narrower than the width of the constriction of the laminal dental in 8: 159198. P. A. van Schaik. & Definition "Bantu" means "people" in many Bantu languages. Velarised diphthongs occur in Aghem, a Grassfields Bantu languages of the Ring group, where they have seemingly resulted from an intrusive consonantal gesture (Faytak 2013). A closure in the vocal tract is formed by the back of the tongue contacting the roof of the mouth in the velar or uvular area and a second closure is formed in front of the location of this closure by the tip or blade of the tongue or the lips, as shown at timestep 1. (2015) High Vowel Fricativization as an Areal Feature of the Northern Cameroon Grassfields. Lengthened vowels are much closer in duration to underlying long vowels in Ganda JE15 than they are in Sukuma F21. Leiden: Brill. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Paper presented at Second World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig. Journal of the International Phonetic Association Thomas-Vilakati confirms that the velar closure always precedes the front closure; this accounts for the fact that nasals preceding clicks assimilate in place to velar position, and corrects a misobservation by Doke (1926), who believed the front closure was formed first: the velar closure must be released after the front closure for the click mechanism to work, but it could in principle be formed later. , (2001) The two vs of Giryama. In The nasal feature is realised as nasalisation of the latter part of the vowel // in Fragment C, following an oral portion, B, and the aspiration of the initial stop, A. Fragment D, which is the consonantal part of the // is voiceless but oral, and as often in an [h]-sound, the transition of the formants of the flanking vowels can be traced through its duration. In Kutsch Lojenga, C. K. Downstep affects the second of two adjacent High tones in Tswana S31 (Zerbian & Kgler 2015) and Bemba M42 (Kula & Hamann 2016). Rialland Downing, L. J. & Bokamba, E. G. 2005, Allwood et al. Volume 1: The Comparative Linguistics of the Bantu Languages. (1996) Notes on Unencoded Speech: Clicks and Their Accompaniments in Xhosa. (eds. Nomdebevana (1985) The Londo Word: Its Phonological and Morphological Structure. Vowel height, backness and rounding can all be factors in control of Bantu harmony. Hertford: Stephen Austen and Sons. J. Shona S10 and Kalanga S16 are also marked by the occurrence of a type of labialisation co-produced with alveolar fricatives which have led to these segments being named whistled, or whistling fricatives (Doke 1931a, Bladon et al. Ziervogel, D. Rialland & 27(3/4): 8396. Each point represents the mean of between seven and 27 tokens of unreduced stem-initial vowels spoken by a male speaker. Proctor, M. Maddieson Brugman 8s. Austin: University of Texas, PhD dissertation. ), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Multiple tone heights As indicated, most Bantu languages have an underlying two-height system, whether privative or equipollent. 36(1): 6792. , Bergen, B. K. & In There is a raising process in Xhosa S41, which results in higher variants of /e o/ when /i u/ occur in the next syllable. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davey, A. Riera The distances along the axes are scaled to reflect auditory/perceptual intervals; F2 is plotted using a logarithmic scale. ), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Chapter 14. Resources listed below are intended to contribute to foundational awareness of potential cultural and linguistic influences. Maphalala, Z. Pharyngeals have developed from velars in other Niger-Congo languages. Mongo-Nkundu C61 has reduction of final lowering, while Zulu S42 and Southern Sotho S33 cancel penultimate lengthening in question prosody. (1996) Dictionrio Changana-Portugus. In Bantu languages are known for their highly developed tense, aspect (and mood) systems. 24(1): 530. ), Proceedings of ISSP 2006: 7th International Seminar on Speech Production, 565572. . Segebarth Figure 3.17 T. N. Kawahara For example, in Chewa N31b, as is common cross-linguistically, the High pitch peak is realised at the end of the syllable to which it is associated (Kim 1998, Myers 1999a). Figure 3.30 There are many important interactions between these three aspects of phonetic structure and some of these will be taken up at the point where it seems appropriate to do so. Vowel and Nasal Harmony in Bantu Languages. (eds. (2000) A Course in Phonetics, 4th edition. Guthrie, M. Rialland & Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mabuta In this and following figures of the same type, the origin of the axes is in the upper right, with first formant (F1) values increasing down from the origin, and second formant (F2) values increasing to the left. , , , Maganga, C. Cologne: Rdiger Kppe. Surveys of intonation in Bantu languages include Zerbian and Barnard (2008) and the volume edited by Downing & Rialland (2016a). (eds. . H. The articulatory contacts can then be examined using stylised displays such as those in 2: 6697. Trinta Studies in African Linguistics R. W. P. | Privacy policy van der Merwe While any vowel quality can appear in the first root syllable, affixes draw from a more restricted vowel inventory. Kula, N. C. The white bow-shaped line crossing each midsagittal image is also an artifact. Zsiga Byrd 2016). (1989) Dental and Alveolar Stops in KiMvita Swahili: An Electropalatographic Study. (1985) On aspiration in Swahili: Hypotheses, Field Observations and an Instrumental Analysis. Figure 3.19 Consonant gemination has developed through internal processes in languages such as Ganda JE15 (Clements 1986) and by contact with Cushitic languages in Ilwana E701 (Nurse 1994). (2009b) Rarefaction Gestures and Coarticulation in Mangetti Dune !Xung clicks. Nchimbi, A. S. A. Nordic Journal of African Studies ), Intonation in African Tone Languages, 393434. Rialland Mean formant values of the 10 surface vowels for one speaker are plotted in In her study, F1, B1 (F1 bandwidth), center of gravity and A1-A2 (relative amplitudes of F1 and F2) help distinguish vowel pairs that differ in [ATR] value to varying degrees depending on the vowel pair and speaker. (2015) The Bantoid Languages. In Oxford Handbooks Online. The separate South-East and South-West groups of Bantu languages with clicks can be seen in the map of Southern Africa in Belo Horizonte: CEFALA. Source: Recording made available by Daniel Duke and Marieke Martin. At vowel onset, the F0 difference between High and Low tones after a set of non-depressor consonants is 22 Hz, but a High tone onset after depressor consonants is 44 Hz lower than after the non-depressors and a Low after depressors is 23 Hz lower than after non-depressors. Ishihara Riad, T. Though cross-linguistically rare, clicks are used by millions of people speaking various Bantu languages. This process does not result in double articulations that are almost totally overlapped, as in labial-velars, but sequential articulations which are overlapped either not at all or no more than is typical of sequences such as /tk/ or /pk/ in English words like fruitcake or hopkiln. On the other hand, it does produce rather unusual consonant sequences in onset positions. & Ms. Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa. Figure 3.30 Shosted, R. K. Fry, C. (2014) The Grammatical Structure of Sowetan Tsotsitaal. , These vowels are produced with a retracted tongue root, causing a constriction in the upper pharynx. The phonetic realisation of dental and alveolar consonants is dependent on the airstream mechanism. 1989, Pongweni 1990). (2010) Coproduction and Coarticulation in IsiZulu Clicks. I. D. Peter The article of Paulian (1994) does include a few words with short nasalised vowels in stems, but these may be misprints. Traill, A. The three front vowels and the three back vowels can therefore be distinguished one from another solely by height. (1993) Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. 20(2): 3336. In 2011, Boyer & Zsiga 2013). (1996) Boundary Tones and the Phonetic Implementation of Tone in Chichewa. 71(1): 5081. Although not seen in a mid-sagittal diagram, the sides of the tongue are also raised to complete the seal between anterior and dorsal closures. For Sukuma F21, Batibo (1985) also provides acoustic evidence for a relatively wide separation of the seven vowels, with /e o/ all being clearly mid vowels. Downing, L. J. The click in the second syllable has a dorsal release that is closer in time to the release of the anterior click closure. K. The click in the word [ruoma] papyrus in M. N. Malcolm Guthrie in his classification of Bantu languages (1967-71) places this language in zone N in the unit N31. It is accompanied by a separate map in which the Bantu languages are numbered in accordance with the system described in the fourth section. a/. These, we argue, include complex lexicalizations consisting of a. de Schryver & A monumental four-volume classification of Bantu languages, Comparative Bantu (196771), which was written by Malcolm Guthrie, has become the standard reference book used by most scholarsincluding those who disagree with Guthries proposed classification, which sets up a basic western and eastern division in Bantu languages with a further 13 subdivisions. H. In 2(4): 685729. VOT differs, as expected, between voiced, voiceless unaspirated and aspirated stop categories in Kgalagari S311, and it also varies by place of articulation within each category. The relative timing and durations of velar and front closures deduced from acoustic and aerodynamic data are graphed in In Stewart, J. M. Figure 3.1 Ndana, Ndana & Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistic Society In Most Bantu languages are reported as having two series of plosives, voiced and voiceless, and this follows the Proto-Bantu reconstruction of Meeussen (1967). (eds. A. The term argument is defined by Trask (1993:20) as "a noun phrase . shows a spectrogram of the Nyamwezi F22 word /apo/ basket spoken in isolation. & (1969) Tone in Bantu. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics Afido, P. Figure 3.28 The question of the role of ATR interacts with the question of the nature of the high vowels, as the *super-high/*high contrast might have been an expression of an ATR contrast or transformed into one in daughter languages. Muniru (Available online at. M. Gouskova, M. Figure 3.29 (2010) Accent in African Languages. , (ed. Clicks in the South-West cluster were borrowed independently from those in the South-East. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences Downing, L. J. (2012) Tonal Variation in the Tense System of Mundabli, Western Beboid (Bantoid, Cameroon). & In Sukuma F21, the nasal portion of the voiceless nasals is often at least partly voiced or breathy voiced, as described in Maddieson (1991), whereas the parallel segments in Rwanda JD61 are fully voiced (except after voiceless fricatives), but produced with a modified kind of voicing described by Demolin and Delvaux (2001) as whispery-voice. (2011) Linguistic Geography or Evidence for Genetic Affiliation? H. Figure 3.7 & Sitoe, B. Phonological development of first language isiXhosa-speaking children aged 3;0-6;0 years: A descriptive cross-sectional study. ), Namibian Languages. , Thomas-Vilakati, K. D. (2017) How Do You Whisper a Click? Figure 3.5 Journal of African Languages and Linguistics , with no difference in meaning. (1959) A Grammar of Northern Transvaal Ndebele. Figure 3.1 (eds. Hinnebusch Figure 3.20 The white horizontal lines indicate the width of the maximum constriction. Waveform and spectrogram of the middle syllable of the Fwe K402 word [ruoma] papyrus, spoken by a male speaker. Table 3.3 60(4): 231260. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. This can be seen by the converging F2 and F3 transitions at the end of the first vowel, (as indicated by the arrow), which indicate a velar constriction. L. M. (1993) Phonetics of Partially Nasal Consonants. Matumbi P13 has been claimed to have super-close vowels /i u/ (Odden 1996: 5), but the description of the contrast between /i u/ and /i u/ as being roughly equivalent to the contrast between [], [] and [i], [u] suggests that the vowels likely contrast tongue root position (ATR) rather than tongue height. Lindblom Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter. Omar 3: 79121. Spectrogram of Kwasio A81 /ko/ [k] to go spoken by a male speaker. For individuals learning English as a second language, it is common for the phonemic system of their first language to influence the production of sounds in English. Yao P21 has a long/short contrast and significant compensatory lengthening so that vowels before prenasalised stops are as long as underlying long vowels and have more than double the duration of short vowels. Figure 3.35 London: Gregg International. Cheucle, M. Toda /, //) (Fulop et al. 54: 93108. Figure 3.26 In (2012) Introducing Kwasio Pharyngealized Vowels. The traditional Bantu (people) government is therefore a model to revisit and update, in this world where people feel abused by politics. Bantu is a general term for over 400 different ethnic groups in Africa, from Cameroon to South Africa, united by a common language family (the Bantu languages) and in many cases common customs.. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Wright, R. Ejective stops and affricates are more rarely found in the Bantu languages, although they occur as variants of the unaspirated voiceless stops in languages of the South, especially in post-nasal contexts. (2015) The Phonetic Basis of a Phonological Pattern: Depressor Effects of Prenasalized Consonants. 19(1): 119. A. & Strasbourg: Institut de Phonetique, available online: Miller, A. , , Ladefoged, P. Figure 3.34 Create a chart to keep track of your information. Online publication date: January 2019. The examples cited during this study are taken from the selected languages shown in the following list. The classification is primarily linguistic, for the cultural patterns of Bantu speakers are extremely diverse; the linguistic connection, however, has given rise to . , Only a small part of this difference can be accounted for by the difference in peak pressre between the click types. Figure 3.32 45(1): 6169. Merrill The Bantu languages are spoken in a very large area, including most of Africa from southern Cameroon eastward to Kenya and southward to the southernmost tip of the continent. ), Tabasaranskie Etjudy, 616. Areas in black on the map represent the geographical distribution of languages with large click inventories, and areas in grey represent smaller click inventories. (eds. De Wit, G. & & Cologne: Rdiger Kppe. Kuperus, J. 8: 525562. In Zulu, for instance, the lexical function is shown in the contrast between yng doctor and yng moon or yl refuse and yl begin. The grammatical function is illustrated in mnt person and mnt it is a person or nghlnz I wash and nghlnz I washing (the participial form). Bemba M42 short vowels /i e a o u/ tend to be lax compared to their long vowel counterparts /i e a o u/ (Hamann & Kula 2015): short high and mid vowels tend to be lower and more centralised than long ones, while /a/ is higher than /a/. Brasington ), Advances in African Linguistics, 265280. For this reason it is possible to examine on a general basis certain features of the class system of these languages that is involved in the use of concord. 17: 331. (1996) The Phonology and Morphology of Kimatuumbi. In Mpiemo A86c, implosives have a slight rise in F0 before the onset of a following vowel while voiced plosives have a sharp dip in F0 (Nagano-Madsen & Thornell 2012). Xhosa S41 vowel formant means (Roux & Holtzhausen 1989). Source: Recording and images made available by Michael Proctor. F. Examples are given in The top and middle rows show a waveform and spectrogram, respectively. Pretoria: University of South Africa. (1995) Nasal Consonant Harmony at a Distance: The Case of Yaka. Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the Bantoid subgroup of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The equalisation of internal and external pressure at release occurs much more quickly in post-alveolar clicks than for dental and lateral clicks. Windhoek: Out of Africa Publishers. (2016) Tone and Intonation in Shingazidja. & E. & Figure 3.4 Figure 3.12 Shah (2014) The whistled Fricative in Xitsonga: Its Articulation and Acoustics. 123). & (2009) NUGL Online: The Online Version of the New Updated Guthrie List, a Referential Classification of the Bantu Languages (4 Juni 2009) (Available online at. The whistled fricative has more peaked and compact spectra than its non-whistled counterpart, and the fricatives also differ in other acoustic measures. , A Bantu five-vowel system consisting of /i a u/ has been described for Soga JE16 (Nabirye et al. Vowel length contrasts occur in some Bantu languages, which may or may not be accompanied by changes in vowel quality and/or various processes of vowel lengthening (cf. Fricated vowels occur in Kom and Oku, two Grassfields Bantu languages of the central Ring group (Faytak 2014, Faytak & Merrill 2014), as well as in several Bantoid languages of the northern Cameroon Grassfields (Faytak 2015). In both cases aspects of timing are particularly relevant. Next, the closure at the front and/or side of the mouth is released (timestep 4) and the abrupt equalisation of air pressures inside and outside the mouth results in a sharp acoustic transient. Africana Linguistica Volume 3: A Catalogue of Common Bantu with Commentary. & As Ngcobo In Northern Sotho S32, however, there is speaker variation in the position of the F0 peak, which may occur somewhere between the second and the third syllable, counting from the high-tone-bearing, verbstem initial syllable (Zerbian 2009). In Downstep due to a floating Low tone is attested in Basaa A43a (Makasso et al. ), The Khoesan Languages, 435444. In describing clicks, it is customary to talk of the click type and the click accompaniment. ), Mixed Languages: 15 Case Studies in Language Intertwining, 215224. High front vowels condition tap allophones of /l/ in Ganda JE15 (Myers 2015) and Tsonga S53 (Bennett & Lee 2015), and of /r/ in the Washili variety of Ngazidja G44a (Patin 2013). There are thus seven phonetic qualities among the nasalised vowels, but no contrast between all seven in any environment. ), The Bantu Languages, 475500. 13: 83129. A. It is also not possible to definitively state the number of Bantu languages with clicks; clicks may occur in some varieties and not others, as in the case of Fwe K402 (Pakendorf et al. Schadeberg, T. C. . , Mutaka Particularly striking in this connection is the velar ejective lateral affricate [k] of Zulu S42 (cf. Super-close vowels were reconstructed in order to account for the set of sound changes known as Bantu Spirantization, but recent reconstructions have abandoned this explanation (Schadeberg 1995, Bastin et al. Pascoe Monaka & Clicks have not been reported for Manda group languages and are unlikely to occur unless efforts to revitalise Malawian Ngoni on a Zulu model prove effective (Kishindo 2002). Variations in the structure of seven-vowel systems occur which are similar to those of the five-vowel systems. 2009b, Miller 2010, 2016). Theory and Description in African Linguistics: Selected Papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. C. Waveform and spectrogram of the middle syllable of the Fwe K402 word [ruoma] papyrus, spoken by a different male speaker than in In languages which have lost the contrast, each TBU is both a syllable and a mora (and pre-consonantal nasals are typically non-syllabic). Jouannet, F. ga] dog (diminutive); same speaker as in In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (ed. (2011) Bantu Tone. Figure 3.25 Final High or rising intonations are found in Ganda JE15, Chewa N31b and Saghala E74b, while final High-Low or High-falling intonations are found in Jita JE25. (2007) Weie Geister Diachrone Stereotype in Nordnamibia und Sdangola. 15(4): 196204. (1997) Formant Structure of Standard KiSwahili Vowels. Philippson, G. (1998) Aspirates: Their Development and Depression in Ikalanga. Summary. Naidoo, S. Although its true that many languages within the Bantu group are phonetically quite similar to each other, there is considerably more diversity in their phonetic patterns than is often believed. (1987) Qhalaxarzi Consonants. (2016) Information Structure in Bantu Languages. and Hubbard, K. Figure 3.2 Mumin Spectrogram of the Nyamwezi F22 word /apo/ basket. See text for discussion of the phonetic segmentation. For the purposes of this volume, originally published in 1954, two southern zones of Bantu have been included - south of the Zambesi and east of the Kalahari. Hombert, J.-M. Monaka Hamann & Voll, R. Among phoneticians, the Bantu languages have a reputation as not having many interesting features, with the exception of the clicks introduced in some languages of the southern area. Languages of the North-West, the Eastern coastal area and the South-East often have at least one implosive, most frequently a bilabial, but implosives are generally absent in the languages of the Congo basin and the South-West. Laine and The [-ATR] high Hume (eds. Figure 3.31 Introduction This chapter will describe some of the major phonetic characteristics of the (Narrow) Bantu languages based on first-hand familiarity with some of them and a reading of available literature. & & (2016) Stem-Initial Accent and C-Emphasis Prosody in North-Western Bantu. Part of the aim of the present chapter is therefore to draw greater attention to this diversity. 46(2): 297305. Patin, C. R. Detailed studies of this type not only illuminate the individual language studied but may provide insights into diachronic issues. (1991) Articulatory Phonology and Sukuma aspirated nasals. In South African Journal of African Languages Downing, L. J. The bilabial click // is not found in Bantu except in paralinguistic utterances, and as a variant pronunciation of a sequence of labial and velar stops, as in Rwanda JD61 (Demolin 2015: 483). Hombert In The front closure for dental clicks is formed earlier and held longer (about 105 ms) than that for post-alveolar or lateral clicks (about 80 ms). Special mention may be made of Carl Meinhofs work in the 1890s, in which he sought to reconstruct what he called ur-Bantu (the words underlying contemporary Bantu forms), and the descriptive work carried out by Clement Doke and the Department of Bantu Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, in the period 192353. Figure 3.2 Shosted Volume 2: Bantu Prehistory, Inventory and Indexes. Cologne: Rdiger Kppe. On this basis these particular vowels would not quite justify being considered high, but they are clearly markedly higher than those of Xhosa S41. (1981) Concise SiSwati Dictionary: SiSwati-English/English-SiSwati. Kerremans 1980). The dorsal constriction of clicks in Fwe is typically velar. Reports and Papers, 307450. 2003). (eds. Proctor, M. , Polar or mid tones are found in Holoholo D28 and Nyanga D43. Hamlaoui Monaka, K. C. In Thomas-Vilakatis study, inserts with 96 electrodes were used, together with software allowing a sweep of the contact patterns to be made every 10 ms. S. Gick, B. & Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 31: 111137. P. Berlin: Language Science Press. Figure 3.24 However, the original notion of a depressor consonant is quite different from this expanded use. Phonetica Most of the languages have relatively limited sets of fricatives of the cross-linguistically common types, although lateral fricatives (and affricates) have developed in or been borrowed into a number of the southern languages, such as Sotho-Tswana S30, Xhosa S41 and Zulu S42. P. J. Paper presented at the 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Austin Texas, 58 January 2017. Focus and emphasis are associated with pitch raising in Mwiini G412 (Kisseberth 2016), but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule in Bantu. (eds. Louw, J. . (2011) Bantu Substratum Interference in Mozambican Portuguese Speech Varieties.

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