the university of chicago the phonology and ... - SIL International

Second, the sound is comparatively well-attested in Mono, occurring in over 45
words, a sample of which are shown in (3). Third, the sound occurs in all major
grammatical categories in Mono, including nouns, verbs, and adverbs. The distinction
between the major grammatical categories is made on both paradigmatic and syntagmatic
grounds. For example, verbs take the infinitive prefix , adverbs occur following the
verb, and ideophonic adverbs are reduplicated. Some of the verbs could be thought to
have ideophonic semantic content, but it is clear that a large number of words in Mono
containing the sound are not ideophonic.
Fourth, the sound occurs in both word-initial and word-medial positions. Finally,
it occurs before most vowels in the language, including front, back, high, and low
vowels.
(3) Sample lexical items in Mono containing the labial flap (from the first author’s
field notes except where noted).
nouns animals verbs
=MA(CA =MA(CA =MA(CA =MA(CA ‘rainbow’ =MAA =MAA =MAA =MAA ‘catfish’ (M (M (M (M ‘to throw’
@MH @MH @MH @MH ‘crowd’ JAMA( JAMA( JAMA( ‘black ant’ (AMA (AMA (AMA (AMA ‘to fold’
=(M=(H=( =(M=(H=( ‘wisdom’ =M( =M( =M( =M( ‘hyena’ (M (M (M (M ‘to roll’ (Kamanda 1998)
@ @ @ @ M=( M=( M=( M=( ‘rubber’ M=(J M=(J M=(J M=(J ‘queen ant’ (M= (M= (M= (M= ‘to send’
=MKHK =MKHKCK =MKHK =MKHKCK
CK CK ‘vehicle’ MKHKK MKHKK MKHKK MKHKK ‘dung beetle’
>KMAA >KMAA >KMAA >KMAA ‘type of banana’
(=M= (=M= (=M= (=M= ‘to snap’
body parts adverbs/ideophones
M== M== M== M== ‘bone marrow’ M M
‘throw out’
M(( M(( M(( M(( ‘thigh’ MA(CA MA(CA ‘hot’
MJ MJ MJ MJ ‘calf’
2. Ndogo. Ndogo is an Ubangian language (Sere-Ngbaka-Mba) spoken in Sudan.
It has a five vowel system where the vowels transcribed as e and o are pronounced [-]
and [], respectively.
First, the labial flap is contrastive with the other labial sounds in Ndogo. Contrasts
are listed in (4):
286