Morphology, Irregularity, and Bantu Frication: The Case of Lulamogi

Abstract

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2015) Morphology, Irregularity, and Bantu Frication: The Case of Lulamogi Larry M. Hyman & John Merrill University of California, Berkeley Paper Presented at the Journee d’Etudes de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris “Actualite des Neogrammariens”, January 18, 2014. Proceedings in Press. “D’apres l’hypothese neogrammarienne... tout changement des sons est conditionne a son debut de facon strictement phonetique.... Or les langues bantoues presentent quantite d’exemples ou... l’etat synchronique suggere que certaines langues bantoues ont effectue un changement phonetique de facon reguliere tandis que dans d’autres langues soeurs un changement analogue n’apparait que dans des contextes morphologiques precis.” (Hyman 1997: 163) Introduction The purpose of this paper is to revisit a set of phonological changes that the first author addressed 18 years ago in the Journee d’Etudes of the Societe de Linguistique de Paris, which continue to intrigue Bantuists as presenting apparent problems for the Neogrammarian hypothesis (see above citation). To begin, the elements of the Neogrammarian tradition can be summarized as follows: (i) “Major” sound changes are “regular”, that is, all of the targeted sounds that meet the conditions undergo the change. (ii) Such major sound changes are phonetically conditioned. Specifically, morphological structure plays no role in their initiation. (iii) Apparent counter-examples are due to two other factors: First, sound changes which are “irregular” may be the result of borrowings due to contact. Second, changes which invoke morphology are due to other mechanisms, e.g. analogy. (iv) The study of sound change requires rigorous application of the comparative method and internal reconstruction. While most of the Neogrammarian tradition was devoted to the study of Indo-European, a Bantu Neogrammarian tradition has existed for at least 150 years: “In Bantu studies... research by Bleek, Meinhof, Guthrie, Meeussen and their students has a distinctly comparative and diachronic character that begins more neogrammarian than structuralist.” (Hyman 2005: 22) Thus, the reconstruction of Bantu lexicon and morphology traces back at least to Bleek (1862, 1869). As reported by Schadeberg (2002:184), since this time different Bantuists have reconsturcted the following number of Proto-Bantu (PB) and regional lexical items (with larger numbers admittedly including a number of doublets): 1 Meinhof (1899) Meinhof (1910) Bourquin (1923) Homburger (1913) Homburger (1925) Meeussen (1969) Guthrie (1967-71) (CB) Guthrie (1967-71) (PB) CBOLD (ca. 1996) BLR 3 (2002) Guthrie’s CB = Common Bantu, PB = Proto-Bantu; CBOLD = Comparative Bantu On-Line Dictionary; BLR = Bantu Lexical Reconstructions (Bastin et al).