TY - GEN
T1 - Asymmetries in vowel-pair frequencies and height harmony in Bantu
AU - Nichols, Stephen
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - In this paper, I present an exploration of vowel-pair frequencies in the nouns of six five-vowel Bantu languages and discuss their relationship with those alternations seen in verbs due to height harmony. Of particular interest is the disparity in the frequencies of two vowel pairs disagreeing in height, specifically [e.i] and [o.u], both between themselves and with the corresponding pairs which agree in height, namely [e.e] and [o.o]. The results show that while both [e.e] and [o.o] are over-represented, [e.i] and [o.u] are generally under-represented. In addition to this, [o.u] is consistently less frequent than [e.i] and the difference in representation between [o.o] and [o.u] is larger than between [e.e.] and [e.i].
AB - In this paper, I present an exploration of vowel-pair frequencies in the nouns of six five-vowel Bantu languages and discuss their relationship with those alternations seen in verbs due to height harmony. Of particular interest is the disparity in the frequencies of two vowel pairs disagreeing in height, specifically [e.i] and [o.u], both between themselves and with the corresponding pairs which agree in height, namely [e.e] and [o.o]. The results show that while both [e.e] and [o.o] are over-represented, [e.i] and [o.u] are generally under-represented. In addition to this, [o.u] is consistently less frequent than [e.i] and the difference in representation between [o.o] and [o.u] is larger than between [e.e.] and [e.i].
UR - https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/293
M3 - Conference contribution
T3 - Contemporary African Linguistics
BT - Celebrating 50 years of ACAL: Selected Papers from the 50th Annual Conference on African Linguistics
PB - Language Science Press
ER -