As a rough rule of thumb, vowels with a first formant lower than 400 Hz may be considered high vowels in a female voice. (2009b) Rarefaction Gestures and Coarticulation in Mangetti Dune !Xung clicks. Ms. Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa. (eds.) Dr. Wilhelm Bleek first used the term "Bantu" in its current sense in his 1862 book A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, in which . (2015) The Bantoid Languages. In Oxford Handbooks Online. & Nyamwezi F22 vowel formant means according to measurements by the first author. (1997) Formant Structure of Standard KiSwahili Vowels. There are very few studies of this type available so far for Bantu languages, but one data set is shown in & Clicks are found in many words in Southern Sotho S33 (Guma 1971), but only occur in a few sound symbolic words and interjections in Northern Sotho S32 (Poulos & Louwrens 1994). S. L. ), Phonology and Phonetic Evidence, 168187. L. M. , M. 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). In this variety, some speakers fail to devoice, and others devoice intervocalically as well as after nasals (Zsiga et al. . Guthrie, M. In They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.. Elderkin P. & Mhlig, W. J. G. . UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 2016). (eds. (eds. Mathangwane, J. T. , , , who has little or no knowledge of the Bantu languages with enough information to adequately understand the subsequent acquisition chapters. We propose a political theory, based on consensual . (PDF) Bantu Lexical Reconstruction - ResearchGate Figure 3.9 ), Proceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Speech Production, 137140. There are different types of downstep attested in some Bantu languages. . Journal of the International Phonetic Association In The ATR vowel /e/ and the RTR vowel /e/ differ both in the shape of the tongue body and in the amount of tongue root retraction, which can be estimated by the volume of tongue mass which occurs to the left of the white dotted line. In (forthcoming) Click Loss and Click Insertion in Fwe. She shows that voiceless palatal and velar stops tend to have longer VOT measurements than bilabial, dental or uvular stops (Monaka 2005). 1111-1120 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies R. Schulz, S. International Journal of American Linguistics Tonal contrasts and vowel length contrasts are often restricted to stem-initial syllables (Downing 2010). Tlale ), The Complete Linguist: Papers in Memory of Patrick J. Dickens, 135170. 2024, Kyoto. The 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, August 1721, 2011, 17261729. Kula , (ed. K. Downing, L. J. Recordings made by the first author of two other female speakers of Kalanga S16, one from Francistown in Botswana and one from Zimbabwe, did not replicate the pattern suggested by Mathangwane. & There are four click accompaniments in Fwe K402: voiceless unaspirated, voiced oral, voiced nasal and voiceless nasal, but the language has no contrast for click type or place (Gunnink forthcoming). Figure 3.11 In Kalanga S16, on the other hand, the vowels are crowded into the upper part of the vowel space, with the front pair in particular being very close together. , (2016a) Intonation in African Tone Languages. 1992). Laprie ), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Chapter 14. The palatal click type may be found as a variant of // used in child-directed speech in Zulu and Xhosa (Bradfield 2014: 27). (1987) Acoustic and Perceptual Consequences of Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation in Three Bantu Languages. (2002) An Acoustic Study of Contrasting Plosives and Click Accompaniments in Xhosa. In South-West Bantu languages, Yeyi has these three click types as well as a contrastive laminal post-alveolar type //, variously called alveolar or palatal in different sources. In Changana S53, whistling fricatives occur with a rounded lip posture (Shosted 2011) rather than the narrowed lip posture seen in Shona S10, Kalanga S16 and Tsonga S53. Rialland (1986) Compensatory Lengthening and Consonant Gemination in Luganda. Carleton Tokyo: ILCAA. Figure 3.33 Demolin 45(1): 6169. . For instance, the final High in yes-no questions in Zamba is preceded by a sharp fall (Bokamba 1976: 19). E. D. ), Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics, Cologne, 1721 August 2009, 533543. Dental and alveolar implosives and clicks may display constriction patterns that differ from those of corresponding pulmonic stops. & Nathan (1998) Aspirates: Their Development and Depression in Ikalanga. (1976) Question Formation in Some Bantu Languages. Tsoutios M. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. & & Clicks have been reported to occur in Ikuhane, or Botswanan Subiya (Ndana et al. In Kutsch Lojenga, C. Washington, DC: Georgetown University, PhD dissertation. Abry P. (2010) A Re-evaluation of the Zulu Implosive []. ), Intonation in African Tone Languages, 167194. (2013) The Impact of Khoesan on Southern Bantu. Figure 3.3 Stewart, J. M. Phonology . & It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three Africans, are Bantu speakers. , Source: Recording and images made available by Michael Proctor. The positions of vowels in an acoustic space are often shown by plotting values of the first two formants. Redford, M. A. New Proposals for the Phonological Inventory of Proto-Bantu. (2016) Chimiini Intonation. so an outline is given of the main characteristics of each separate group. Figure 3.12 Sezer Languages without tone do occur, e.g., Swahili G42, Mwiini G412, Nyakyusa M31, as do ones with more than two level tones, e.g., Kamba E55 and Oku (Grassfields Bantu) (Downing 2010, Hyman 2014). Special attention is paid to consonants with complex articulations, including clicks and the so-called whistling fricatives. It is hoped that the brief discussions of selected issues here will encourage more attention to be paid to phonetic aspects of these languages. A. Verhoeven (2007) The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive. Traill, A. In Bemba M42, polar questions are marked by a final boundary L% on the final syllable, but pitch range expansion is also used (Kula & Hamann 2016). In Berkeley Linguistics Society The peak negative pressures reached in clicks are typically -100 hPa or more and may reach over -200, as shown in Figure 3.28. & Yehia, H. C. Source: Mid-sagittal MRI scans of isolated vowels, made available by Didier Demolin. Variations in the structure of seven-vowel systems occur which are similar to those of the five-vowel systems. (2016) Stem-Initial Accent and C-Emphasis Prosody in North-Western Bantu. Paper presented at Second World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig. E. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics M. In In addition, many have only H and L in their outputs, e.g. ), The Khoesan Languages, 435444. (2017) Prehistoric Bantu-Khoisan Language Contact: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach. I. P. R. A. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. ), Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics, Cologne, 1721 August 2009, 219224. Nande JD42 contrasts with Bitam Fang A75 in that it uses ATR for phonetic distinctions. As Riad, T. Based on shared characteristics and on territorial contiguity, Guthrie grouped the Bantu languages into 15 geographical (and partly genetical) zones. Figure 3.17 Access English Franais Africa (1954) The Southern Bantu Languages. Kodzasov, S. V. Egert, M. Louwrens (2015) High Vowel Fricativization as an Areal Feature of the Northern Cameroon Grassfields. , Ndana, Ndana 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. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press. In Rwanda JD61, there is anticipatory coarticulation of tone, with the F0 of a syllable being affected by a High tone in a later syllable (Myers 2003). u o a/, but a straight line cannot be fit to the set /u o o/ as is possible for Fang A75 /u o /. (eds. (2016) Information Structure in Bantu Languages. L. Strasbourg: Institut de Phonetique, available online: Miller, A. 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. Rous Corpus studies of Bantu languages are currently few in number (Prinsloo & de Schryver 2001, Niesler et al. Hinnebusch Myers, S. An alternation of some kind is probably to be reconstructed to an early stage, possible even pre-Bantu. eBook ISBN: 9781315755946 Adobe 2017), but they have not been documented in Namibian or Zambian varieties (Baumbach 1997: 311, Jacottet 1896). Brenzinger, M. The ATR/RTR contrast in Nande JD42 is also suggested by the harmonic behaviour and acoustic characteristics of vowels. Language locations are estimated following Maho (2009) and Gieseke and Seifert (2007). These vowels bring to mind the super-high or super-close vowels /i u/ used by Meeussen (1967, 1969) and Guthrie (1967, 1970a, 1970b, 1971) and notated as / / by Meinhof (1899), in addition to normal high /i u/. Oxford; Cambridge: Blackwell. | Free trial Positional restrictions are another aspect of prosody in Bantu languages. & (2016) Posterior Lingual Gestures and Tongue Shape in Mangetti Dune !Xung Clicks. & M. This suggests that speakers of the same language may differ in the degree to which they use tongue root position to contrast vowels that are described as differing in the phonological feature [ATR]. In (forth.). ), Mixed Languages: 15 Case Studies in Language Intertwining, 215224. , / all represent a voiced nasal (post)alveolar click. In . Persson, J. (1891) Introductory Grammar of the Ngoni (Zulu) Language, as Spoken in Momberas Country. (1994) Duration in Moraic Theory. (eds. Maddieson, I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (1990) Shona Velarization: Complex Consonants or Complex Onsets? Volume 3: A Catalogue of Common Bantu with Commentary. Note that as many PB (1989) Relatrio do I Seminrio sobre a Padronizao da Ortografia de Lnguas Moambicanas. , (forthcoming) for a description of the methodology used to obtain the images. , Figure 3.4 Noun class systems are universal and almost always marked by prefixes, occasionally by suffixes. The Bantu languages are polysyllabic, employ class prefixes, use tone for grammati- cal rather than semantic distinctions, place the genitive after the governing noun, etc. & African Studies Figure 3.2 First Published 1959. eBook Published 22 September 2017. . Figure 3.5 Downing, L. J. Multiple tone heights As indicated, most Bantu languages have an underlying two-height system, whether privative or equipollent. Proctor, M. Because the insert does not cover the soft palate, this closure cannot be observed on the EPG record at this time. Means of Fwe vowel formants are shown in in S. J. & , The typical pattern for dental/alveolar contrasts is that the dentals are laminal while the alveolars are apical. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, retrieved from. Nine-vowel languages in the Mbam group, such as Mmala A62B and Baca A621, have a contrast between /e/ and // not found in the eight-vowel systems. It has since sometimes come to be used for any consonant which has any local lowering effect on pitch or, more accurately, on the fundamental frequency of vocal fold vibration, abbreviated F0, such as an ordinary voiced plosive. Bantu orthographies usually do not indicate these alternations, unless subsequent developments have created a contrast between, say, /b/ and //, or /b/ and //. L. (2012) Introducing Kwasio Pharyngealized Vowels. Both Soga JE16 and Fwe K402 have a vowel length contrast. & Determine their location, language, culture, and place in society in their country/region. Hombert, J.-M. ), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (2001) Whispery Voiced Nasal Stops in Rwanda. There is evidence for post-nasal fortition rather than devoicing in the Ngwato S31c variety (Gouskova et al. London: Gregg. Renaud, P. The second click also has a velar closure. Tonga M64 does not preserve Proto-Bantu vowel length, but has developed long vowels from intervocalic consonant loss. Peak negative pressure in the three click types of Zulu S42 means for voiceless clicks in three vowel environments spoken by three speakers. , Brenzinger, M. shows a realisation of a medial instance of the same segment in the word /k/ to suck. In this case there is no consonantal nasality. Tonga M64 has long vowels but does not show any compensatory lengthening before NC. This is also the pattern predicted by computational models of vowel system structure from Liljencrants and Lindblom (1972) to Schwartz et al. Following Traill et al. EPG frames of a lateral click spoken by a male Zulu S42 speaker. Clicks are marginal in Tswana S31 and Kgalagari S311, with the possible exception of the Shetjhauba variety of Kgalagari (Tlale 2005, Lukusa and Monaka 2008). Our recommended IPA transcription and corresponding Zulu S42 orthographic symbols is given in (2009) On Pitch Lowering Not Linked to Voicing: Nguni and Shona Group Depressors. Depressors also occur in Digo E73 and other Mijikenda E70 group languages and in Kalanga S16 and other Shona S10 group languages (Downing 2010). Create a chart to keep track of your information. Vove B305 vowel formant means according to measurements by the first author on a recording made by Jean-Marie Hombert, made available by Lolke Van der Veen. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. , In this particular token there is a long lag between the time the velar closure is made and when the front closure is sealed, about 80 ms later. Prieto (eds. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of African Linguistics 47, University of California, Berkeley. 2015). That Zulu dental clicks are produced with a controlled fricated release is also clear from the way the front release initially involves formation of a narrow channel, clearly visible in frame 150. & (2016) Sentence Intonation in Tswana (Sotho-Tswana group). Spectrogram of the Nyamwezi F22 word /apo/ basket. See text for discussion of the phonetic segmentation. Faytak, M. Poulos, G. 46(2): 297305. PDF School of Oriental and African Studies Cambridge University Press Language PDF Bantu Phonetics text & Rialland C. Seifert & & J. D. M. Lengthened vowels are much closer in duration to underlying long vowels in Ganda JE15 than they are in Sukuma F21. Africana Linguistica 3: 19811984. Pp. In In addition we may note that the front pair /i/ and // and the back pair /u/ and // have F2 values which are identical or nearly so, whereas Nyamwezi F22 /e o/ have F2 values intermediate between the higher and lower vowels in the system. Cheucle, M. Miller, A. Dalsagaard, P. Jessen, M. Maho, J. & Figure 3.20 For instance, there are languages with and without downdrift, though the former are more common (Downing & Rialland 2016b). (1994) A Linguistic Analysis of Northern Sotho. Lovestrand, J. In Lee (1931a) A Comparative Study of Shona Phonetics. Zerbian, S. There is no overlap in the closures for the two segments, except optionally in the case of the nasal sequence /m/. Particularly striking in this connection is the velar ejective lateral affricate [k] of Zulu S42 (cf. Research the following groups: Bantu, French Canadians (Quebecois), and Basques. C. J. Boyd, V. L. London; New York: Routledge. The word papyrus may also be articulated with a velar stop in place of the click [rukoma], as seen in 13(2): 171196. Shosted, R. K. Bonn: ISCA-Secretariat. P. , Waveform and spectrogram of the middle syllable of the Fwe K402 word [ruoma] papyrus, spoken by a different male speaker than in 1982, Philippson & Montlahuc 2003). M. V. From frame 150 through to frame 170 the contacted area moves back, so that the configuration at the moment of release is clearly post-alveolar. & (2009) Phonology and Phonetics of Tone in Northern Sotho, a Southern Bantu language. x Downing, L. J. & Air pressure in the oral cavity is measured in relation to the ambient atmospheric pressure in hectoPascals (hPa, equivalent to the pressure required to support 1 cm of water). Hertford: Stephen Austen and Sons. 31: 179198. These people spoke Western Bantu languages and shared a Yaound: ALCAM, Unit de recherche linguistique et phontique, Institut des Sciences humaines. In each case the putatively [ATR] vowel has a substantially higher first formant (hence a lower position on the chart) than its harmonic counterpart. Handbook of African Languages By M. A. Bryan. In 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. (2003) Yeyi Clicks: Acoustic Description and Analysis. Malcolm Guthrie in his classification of Bantu languages (1967-71) places this language in zone N in the unit N31. A. Africana Linguistica (2003) Kilimanjaro Bantu (E60 and E74). Bantu peoples - Wikipedia , halshs-02504383 %RVWRHQ .RHQ 0DUN 9DQ GH 9HOGH ,QWURGXFWLRQ ,Q 9DQ GH 9HOGH 0DUN .RHQ %RVWRHQ 'HUHN 1XUVH *pUDUG 3KLOLSSVRQ HGV 7KH %DQWX /DQJXDJHV QG (GLWLRQ >5RXWOHGJH Areas in black on the map represent the geographical distribution of languages with large click inventories, and areas in grey represent smaller click inventories. Their findings show that participants perform better in syllable awareness tasks than in segment awareness. , Starwalt, C. . Proctor, M. & PDF World Geography - Unit 3 - Cultural Geography Valle Figure 3.27 Western Bantu tradition and use the results to reflect on the nature and the characteristics of the phenomenon one calls tradition. (2016) Tone and Vowel Length in Fwe (Bantu, K402). & (1989) An Acoustic and Perceptual Analysis of Xhosa Vowels. F. Recording courtesy of Constance Kutsch Lojenga. What's in a Bantu verb? Actionality in Bantu languages The current variation between clicks and velars in Imusho Fwe may eventually lead to the loss of clicks in the variety altogether, as clicks are replaced by velars. . 32(2): 113121. Acoustic evidence for tongue root retraction of vowels in several Bantu languages has been provided by Starwalt (2008). Note that a sloping line can be fit to the vowel set /u o a/ and a second roughly parallel lower one to the set / The one spectrogram of a word containing /pk/ published in this study actually shows that the duration of the element is considerably longer than a simple stop, suggesting it contains a sequence of articulations, although no burst is visible for the /p/. Palatogram of [ana] spoken by a Soga JE16 speaker. Lanham, L. W. (2008) Bantu Spirantization: Morphologization, Lexicalization and Historical Classification. 38(1): 825. Acoustic Correlates of Click Voicing in Whispered Speech. Nyambo JE21 is similar to Sukuma in its pattern. Language Documentation and Conservation Twelve Bantu languages are spoken by more than five million people, including Rundi, Rwanda, Shona, Xhosa, and Zulu. Finlayson, R. (1999) Shekgalagari Laryngeal Contrasts: The Plosives. Staubs L. Segebarth (ed. It is difficult to be certain that ATR contrasts exist in a language unless direct articulatory data on the vocal tract configuration during vowel production is available. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Figure 3.32 (1972) The Relationships of Coastal Ndau to the Shona Dialects of the Interior. Print ISBN: 9781138799677 ga] dog (diminutive); same speaker as in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Tswana S31 has a voiceless uvular affricate and voiceless uvular fricative (Bennett et al. Journal of Phonetics De Blois 1970: 155). In addition, there may be retraction of the tongue tip, dorsum or tongue root for some clicks (Miller 2008, Miller & Finch 2011). & Bokamba, E. G. J. C. & (2015) Insights from the Field. There is often only one contrastive liquid, i.e., /l/, // or /r/, though Chaga E60 is among those with more (Davey et al. M. I. & ), Handbook of Click Languages. (1987) Qhalaxarzi Consonants. A. (2011) Grounded Constraints and the Consonants of Setswana. The click type refers to the location of the front closure and the manner in which it is released, which may be abrupt or affricated, central or lateral. Liljencrants, J. G. | How to buy K. 9: 7184. 33(3): 273290. (1990) The Role of Contrast in Limiting Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation in Different Languages. Rice net. (1999) The Historical Interpretation of Vowel Harmony in Bantu. Carleton (1996) demonstrated that units of paragraph length are organised by long-range patterns of tonal declination and resetting. Smouse H. T. N. Bennett, W. G. She reports that the labial closure is formed first. This is not surprising, as retracting the tongue root is more likely to pull the tongue back and down when the tongue body position is front. *CVCV items have become monosyllabic in Fang, the V2 in these cases is often not the *V2 of the reconstructed form. (Available online at. London: Gregg International. The mean results are given in Stanford: CSLI Publications. McCormack, P. Downing, L. J. (2006) On the Status of Voiced Stops in Tswana: Against *ND. (1982) Liquids in Chaga. When the sequence is voiceless, as in /tk/, there is a strong oral release of the first closure. (1971) An Outline Structure of Southern Sotho. & Plausibly, the Vove B305 vowel pairs differ phonetically in pharynx width, which is consistent with the auditory impression they create, while the Kalanga S16 pairs differ in height and to a lesser degree in backness, which is consistent with the auditory impression they create. (1959) A Grammar of Northern Transvaal Ndebele. Vossen Pretoria: University of South Africa. 30: 591627. Oxford: Clarendon Press. In 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. Chichewa is a Bantu language spoken principally in the area of Africa lying in the Great Rift Valley. Xhosa S41 vowel formant means (Roux & Holtzhausen 1989). Ian Maddieson (2015) A surface constraint in Xitsonga: *Li. Finch Articulatory positions of six of the vowels of Fang A75 (variety of Bitam). E. A role for vowel nasalisation in the transmission of nasal consonant harmony across intervening vowels seems likely in the history of Bantu (Greenberg 1951, Hyman 1995). Nasal vowels in the stem are reported to have the qualities [ In 46(2): 235246. Most Bantu languages have a full set of nasals at each place of articulation where a stop or affricate appears, but often intricate (morpho)phonological processes govern nasal/oral alternations and syllabification and other prosodic processes concerning nasals. Equally, voiced segments such as nasals and approximants may contrast in depression (Traill & Jackson 1988, Wright & Shryock 1993, Mathangwane 1998). & Paris: Socit des Etudes Linguistiques et Anthropologiques de France avec le concours du Groupe dEtudes et de Recherches en Linguistique Applique, Universit Nationale du Rwanda. The means for /e o/ plotted here do not include tokens of these raised variants. . Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. In Fwe K402, they were borrowed from Khoe and Ju languages (Bostoen & Sands 2012, Gunnink et al. Guthrie, M. Rialland Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009), 22792282. (2006) Low Vowels andTtransparency in Kinande Vowel Harmony. S. 25(3): 299356. S. J. | Terms & conditions. Toda However, as was observed long ago by Doke (1931b, 1931a), the phonetic patterns vary quite considerably across the different varieties of Shona S10. This may have two principal effects. Hinnebusch Fonetik 2012, 15th Swedish Phonetics Conference, May 30June 1, University of Gothenburg, 7376. (1971) Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu languages. Yeyi R41 has eight different accompaniments (Fulop et al. Differences in lip posture appear to enhance the contrast between labio-dental /f v/ and labial fricatives / / in Kwangali K33 and in Manyo K332 (Ladefoged 1990). 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. 32(1): 115. (2007) Question Prosody: An African Perspective. (1988) Speaker Variation and Phonation Type in Tsonga. The seal around the inside of the teeth is made by 40 ms later, and as the contact area of the back of the tongue enlarges, the front edge of the velar contact is now visible as a line of contacted electrodes at the bottom of the arc.