Balancing social determinism vs. sound change

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between social and phonetic motivations for language change in Fang (Bantoid). While previous research has proposed that innovations in Fang arose due to social need and lack phonetic motivation (Mve et al. 2019; Good, Di Carlo & Tschonghongei 2020), I propose that there is a phonetic motivation and the social situation, at best, was a pathway for the innovation to gain wider adoption in the population. I provide comparative and language-internal evidence that the Fang innovations are driven by two interconnected processes, palatalization and spirantization, triggered by high vowels. These processes have been obscured synchronically in part due to the phonemic merger of *i > ə in some parts of the paradigm, thus making the alternations look phonetically unmotivated.