Phonology of Mono (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, vol .140)

Phonology of Mono describes the sound system of Mono, a Banda language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Morphology and acoustic phonetics are discussed in order to inform the phonological analysis. Several interlinear texts and a wordlist are included.

Notable features of the Mono sound system include:

• A phonemic bilabial flap with velarization,
• An eight-vowel system with fewer front vowels than back vowels,
• A three-level tone system that includes tonal morphemes, a tonal melody on some locative adverbs, and tonal polarity on morphologically complex prepositions,
• Labialization and palatalization realized as [These two unicode IPA characters do not display correctly here], respectively, that can accompany (among other segments) h and [This IPA character does not display correctly here],
• Echo vowel epenthesis causing a /CLV1/ underlying syllable pattern to realized as [CV1LV1],
• Prothetic augmentation of subminimal nominal roots, including overapplication that results in a non-surface-apparent opacity effect, and
• Leftward vowel feature spreading subject to implicational restrictions.

Table of Content

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Abbreviations

1. Introduction
2. Phonemes
3. Tone
4. Labizalization and Palatalization
5. The Syllable
6. Word Shapes
7. Morphology
8. Acoustic Phonetics

Appendices

References

Author Index

Subject Index