Ikalanga Phonetics and Phonology: A Synchronic and Diachronic Study (review)

Ikalanga (Kalanga) is a Bantu language spoken in parts of northern Botswana by perhaps 200,000 people. It is the least documented member of the Shona group, whose other members are found mainly in Zimbabwe. This study is a revised version of native speaker Joyce Mathangwane’s PhD dissertation (University of California at Berkeley, 1996) and represents the first detailed published description of the Ikalanga sound system. The introductory chapter (1–14) provides basic demographic and dialectal data and a brief account of Tswana influence on Ikalanga phonology. The theoretical discussion falls into two parts. Chs. 2–6, devoted to historical developments in the segmental phonology, are informed by Ohala’s research into the effects of listener cognition on sound change (John J. Ohala, ‘Sound change as nature’s speech perception experiment’, Speech Communication 13.155–61, 1993). The treatment of tonemes and tonal sandhi rules (Ch. 7), however, utilizes a lexical phonology framework. The technical descriptions are accompanied throughout by many palatograms, waveforms, pitch diagrams, and spectrograms that illustrate key acoustic features. M draws typological parallels with the phonologies of several other Bantu languages and demonstrates how the diachronic changes she describes continue to operate synchronically in Ikalanga as morphophonemic processes.

M’s treatment of segmental phonology thus succeeds in describing the modern Ikalanga sound system as well as its development from Proto-Bantu. Ch. 2 (15–76) describes the segmental inventory and phonotactic constraints. Interesting typological features include a phonemic series of breathy aspirate consonants and a large inventory of affricates, doubly articulated stops, and prenasalized consonants. Ch. 3 (77–90) discusses the genesis of Ikalanga fricatives and affricates from the effect of Proto-Bantu short high vowels (a process called ‘high vowel frication’). Ch. 4 (91–103) deals with morphophonemic rules of palatalization, Ch. 5 (105–43) with velarization, and Ch. 6 (145–71) with the development of voiceless aspirates and murmured (breathy aspirate) consonants. Ch. 7 describes three tone spreading rules operative in contemporary Ikalanga, a topic already introduced by an article published in an earlier volume of the same series (Larry M. Hyman and Joyce Mathangwane, ‘Tonal domains and depressor consonants in Ikalanga’, Theoretical aspects of Bantu tone, ed. by Larry Hyman and Charles W. Kisseberth, 195–229, Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1998). Consonants involved in the production or maintenance of the Ikalanga low tone (depressor consonants) form a large and heterogeneous group from a phonetic perspective (voicing, for instance, is not one of their essential properties). The final chapter (201–3) reiterates the study’s conclusions. This is followed by a bibliography (205–12) and appendixes showing Ikalanga reflexes of Proto-Bantu sound segments (213–14), sample verb paradigms with attention to the effect of tone on conjugation patterns (215–63), and an Ikalanga-English lexicon (265–342). The lexicon employs current Ikalanga orthography while Ikalanga words elsewhere in the book appear in standard IPA transcription, a prudent decision given that the Ikalanga writing system is still in a state of development because of the complexity of the consonant inventory. Correspondences between these two notations are given in the introduction (12–14).

Although higher levels of language structure are left for future research, this well written descriptive study should place Ikalanga squarely on the radar screen of comparative Bantuists and general typologists.