Bemba

Mwansa, Joseph M.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-01593-8_3

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Bemba, a central Bantu language (M42 in Guthrie's 1948 classification) spoken in Zambia and the Southern Democratic Republic of Congo (Mwansa 2018), has a phonemic vowel length contrast which is neutralised before NCs. The acoustic evidence given in Hamann and Kula (2015: 65-66) based on one speaker shows that this pre-NC vowel, though longer than the short vowel, is considerably shorter than a phonemically long vowel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic and phonological considerations on the moraic status of pre-NC vowels in Bemba

Hamann¹,

Kula

2021

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The pre-NC vowel in many Bantu languages is generally understood to be long. In Bemba, where there is also a vowel length contrast, this raises the question whether the pre-NC vowel is phonetically as long as lexical long vowels and how phonologised this length might be. In contrast to lexically long vowels, pre-NC vowel length is attributed to vowel lengthening resulting from the restructuring of a nasal to create a prenasalised stop. This is thus relevant to whether such stops are treated as unit segments or not. The present paper focuses on the pre-NC vowel and presents an evaluation of whether the pre-NC vowel is monomoraic or bimoraic by considering both phonetic and phonological evidence. Segmental and most tonal evidence leans towards a monomoraic treatment of the pre-NC vowel. One set of tonal data, however, shows variation in moraicity, presenting a mixed picture that we conclude emanates from the intermediate phonetic duration of the pre-NC vowel. 1

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%