Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

In this chapter, we will outline the major phonological, morphological, and syntactic properties of Niger-Congo, paying attention especially to areas of particular typological interest. We will start by discussing two problems: (i) disagreement over what is Niger-Congo; (ii) linguistic features are rarely limited to Niger-Congo (except perhaps noun classes). Our attention will be particularly on the following topics: (i) Consonant systems, usual and unusual systems, e.g. implosives, labiovelars; (ii) vowel systems, especially ATR and nasal contrasts on vowels; (iii) tone and accent:...

Among the first implicational universals proposed were phonological ones such as, “If a language has nasalized vowels, it also has oral vowels”. However, as pointed out by Greenberg (1966), all (spoken) languages have oral vowels, so virtually anything can occur in the conditional clause if the consequent is an absolute universal (cf. “If a language has a velar implosive [ɠ], it has oral vowels” or even “If a language has a case system, it has oral vowels” (Greenberg 1966:509n)). I will start my discussion with some generalizations about phonological dependencies, in part to show...

In this paper I raise the question of whether there are systematic differences between the lexical vs. grammatical functions of tone. Researchers of tone are largely influenced by the properties of the language(s) on which they work. Since tone has an almost exclusively lexical function in East and Southeast Asian languages, researchers of these languages focus primarily on how languages and speakers distinguish tone on lexical morphemes. Languages such Thai, Vietnamese and the wide range within Chinese lead one to posit a particular typology of lexical, monosyllabic tones which may...

According to Selkirk’s (2011) “match theory”, the mapping of syntactic structure onto prosodic domains is universal. What this means is that if a language chooses to implement the relation between syntactic- or phrase-structure in the phonology, certain syntax-phonology relations should be predictable (and others not possible). This potentially produces asymmetries, as in Luganda, where a verb forms a tone phrase with what follows (e.g. an object, adjunct, right-dislocation), but not with what precedes (e.g. the subject, adverbial, left-dislocation). The purpose of my talk is to...