Nonexplosive stops, including implosives and other stops regularly lacking an explosive release burst, occur in roughly 20% of the world's languages, yet their phonological and phonetic properties are still poorly understood. This paper seeks to determine the phonological feature that characterizes this class of sounds. The classical definition of implosives in terms of the ingressive glottalic airstream mechanism raises a number of problems and does not generalize to other types of nonexplosives. It is proposed here instead that the feature underlying the class of nonexplosive stops as a whole is nonobstruence, defined as the absence of posi ti ve oral ai r pressure duri ng occl usi on. Thi s def i ni ti on i s shown to extend to a previously undocumented type of nonexplosive stop found in Ikwere, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria. In this language, the phonemically contrastive nonexplosive bilabial stops [ ' ], though resembling implosives in certain respects, are produced with no lowering of the larynx, nor in the case of [ ], any implosion at release. A study of the acoustic, articulatory and aerodynamic properties of these sounds shows that they satisfy the definition of nonobstruent stops. It is finally suggested that apparently contradictory aspects of the phonological patterning of nonexplosive stops across languages can be explained if they are viewed as both nonobstruents and nonsonorants. In this view, phonological feature theory requires both articulatory features such as [±obstruent] and acoustic features such as [±sonorant].
This paper presents a descriptive study of nasals and nasal harmony in Ikwere, an Igboid language of Nigeria. In the variety studied here, nasality is surface-contrastive in vowels but not in consonants. Nasality has the status of a morpheme-level feature which is either present or absent in each morpheme (root or affix). If present, it is predictably distributed across nonobstruent sounds by a system of nasal harmony which operates within the domain of the simple word, spreading nasality bidirectionally until blocked by an obstruent. The class of nasalizing sounds includes the nonexplosive stops ḃ and 'ḃ , confirming results of an earlier study showing these sounds to be nonobstruents (Clements and Osu 2002). The analysis brings to light some of the basic typological parameters that characterize nasal harmony in Ikwere, as well as an idiosyncratic restriction to the "phonological root", a domain which excludes initial syllables in noun roots that are homophonous with prefixes in other words. The paper concludes with a summary and discussion of implications for the feature analysis and typology of stops.
Sexual differences are expressed in Ikwere either by lexical terms that embody biological characteristics of male and female or by utilizing 'male' rùka͂̀ and 'female' rìya͂̀ for humans, and 'male' óke͂̀ and 'female' éwe͂̀re͂̀ for non humans. This article focuses on how óke͂̀ and éwe͂̀re͂̀ shift from areas (e.g. animals, fish) where they refer to biological differences between the two sexes to other areas (e.g. trees, prices of commodities, sicknesses) where they rather assign to items roles and characteristics regarded as appropriate to male and female members of the society. It further attributes this behaviour to the fact that óke͂̀ and éwe͂̀re͂̀ are polyvalent terms. Thus, properties are selected and activated in regard to their relevance in a given situation.
Il n’est pas rare de considérer, du moins intuitivement, deux unités prises dans une langue comme ayant entre elles un rapport de sens contraire. Sans s’appesantir sur le bien-fondé d’une telle considération, cet article tente d’apporter une illustration supplémentaire de ce phénomène dans sa complexité à travers deux racines verbales -ma et -jɔ de la langue ikwere (parlée au Nigeria). Ces racines participent à la construction d’unités dont les sens (beauté et laideur physique et/ou morale) s’opposent. Toutefois, l’examen d’une série d’exemples révèle qu’une telle opposition de sens n’est pas systématique et constante, elle connaît des limites.
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