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Article dans une revue Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America Année : 2017

The distribution of advanced tongue root harmony and interior vowels in the Macro-Sudan Belt

Résumé

In this paper we investigate the distribution of vowel systems in the Macro-Sudan Belt, an area of Western and Central Africa proposed in recent areal work (Güldemann 2008, 2011; Clements & Rialland 2008). We report on a survey of 615 language varieties with entries coded for two phonological features: advanced tongue root (ATR) harmony and the presence of interior vowels (i.e. non-peripheral vowels, such as [ɨ ɯ ɜ ə ʌ …]). Our results show that the presence of ATR harmony in the Macro-Sudan Belt is limited to three separated zones: an Atlantic ATR Zone, a West African ATR Zone, and an East African ATR Zone, all geographically unconnected to one another. We additionally show that between the West and East African ATR Zones is a geographically extensive, genetically heterogeneous region of Central Africa where ATR harmony is systematically absent which we term the Central African ATR-less Zone. Our results also show a large region where phonemic and allophonic interior vowels are disproportionately prevalent, which we term the Central African Interior Vowel Zone. This zone noticeably overlaps with the Central African ATR-less Zone, suggesting that ATR and interiority have an antagonistic relationship. Chi-square tests support the presence of a strong relationship between the two types of vowel contrasts.
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halshs-04370786, version 1 (03-01-2024)

Licence

Paternité - CC BY 4.0

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Nicholas Revett Rolle, Matthew Faytak, Florian Lionnet. The distribution of advanced tongue root harmony and interior vowels in the Macro-Sudan Belt. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2017, 2, pp.1-15. ⟨10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4058⟩. ⟨halshs-04370786⟩
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Dernière date de mise à jour le 19/05/2024
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