here - 5th International Conference on Bantu Languages

Vowels under pressure - spirants again?
Eva-Marie Ström, University of Gothenburg, eva-marie.strom@african.gu.se
The aim of this paper is to show that The Ndengeleko language (P10) is currently in the process of
undergoing vowel reduction, simultaneously adding to its inventory of fricatives. These synchronic
changes are taking place under pressure from the contact situation with Swahili. Swahili is becoming
the de facto L1 for most young speakers. For the majority of children, Swahili is the only language.
Within Bantu diachronic studies, a well-known historical sound change is spirantization, which
typically goes hand in hand with vowel reduction from 7 > 5 (Schadeberg 1995), but not necessarily.
In most affected Bantu languages spirantization has led to the addition of fricatives/affricates to the
consonant inventory. Ndengeleko has also been affected by this historical sound change, but went
further via h to ø in the relevant contexts (Hinnebusch 1981 ; Janson 2007). Compare Ndengeleko -uu
‘ash’, with Proto-Bantu *-bú and Jita -fu (Downing 2007). The Ndengeleko language did not reduce
its vowel system as a result of spirantization. It retains the 7 vowels which have also been
reconstructed for Proto-Bantu.
My fieldwork shows that Ndengeleko speakers in their thirties tend to level out the 7 vowels to a 5vowel
system. In most cases, this leads to a lowering of the second-degree vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ to /e/ and
/o/, respectively. The picture is still somewhat unclear, as the following phonetic chart illustrates:
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Figure 1 F1 and F2 values of vowels for a female speaker, 29 yrs, in a sample of 175 tokens (the sample focusses on the front
and back vowels).
Speakers above the age of 50, however, make clear distinctions between the four high vowels. I
propose that the difference between young and old speakers indicates that the vowel system of
Ndengeleko is in the process of undergoing reduction to 5 vowel phonemes. Furthermore, t<strong>here</strong> are
lexical items in the language which have not been affected by the historical spirantization and
consonant loss, but include typical spirantizing contexts, like the consonant/vowel combinations pi and
pu. Presumably, these lexical items have entered the language after spirantization and consonant loss
took place. It is interesting to note that t<strong>here</strong> is allophonic variation [pi~fi] and [pu~fu] in such items:
lipíiŋga/lifíiŋga ‘egg’ (cl.5). Moreover, for speakers who use [pi]/[pu], the stop is aspirated. In this
paper I propose that a process similar to spirantization is affecting the language (again) and that this
time, the vowel inventory will be reduced.
Downing, Laura. 2007. Explaining the role of the morphological continuum. Africana Linguistica 13, pp 53-78.
Hinnebusch, Thomas J. 1981. Northeast coastal Bantu. In: T. J. Hinnebusch, D. Nurse and M. J. Mould(eds.).
Studies in the classification of Eastern Bantu languages, pp 21-125. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
Janson, Tore. 2007. Bantu spirantisation as an areal change. Africana Linguistica 13, pp 79-116.
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