Abstract
Abstract In this article, we present a qualitative and quantitative comparative account of Final Vowel Loss (fvl) in the Bantu languages of the Lower Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We argue that this diachronic sound shift rose relatively late in Bantu language history as a contact-induced change and affected adjacent West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu languages belonging to different phylogenetic clusters. We account for its emergence and spread by resorting to two successive processes of language contact: (1) substrate influence from extinct hunter-gatherer languages in the center of innovation consisting of Bantu B80 languages, and (2) dialectal diffusion towards certain peripheral Bantu B70, C80, H40 and L10 languages.
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