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2 results

  • 2 - Vocalism: The Vowels

  • from Part 1 - Prosody and Phonology
  • Edited by Danko Šipka, Arizona State University, Wayles Browne, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics
    Published online:
    16 May 2024
    Print publication:
    23 May 2024, pp 29-44

  • Summary

    Until the very early Middle Ages, Slavic vocalism developed uniformly. Later it began to diversify. Causes of diversification included territorial dispersion and occupation of areas where non-Slavic tribes lived or where Slavs neighboured non-Slavs. Some areas retained archaic features; others began to develop innovations. Hence, smaller intersecting areas often arose with particular features. In addition to the five mandatory vowel segments, Slavic languages have additional regional segments. We distinguish at least the following: an area with phonological long vowels; the western periphery with diphthongs and additional intermediate segments between /i/ and /e/ and between /u/ and /o/; an area with additional central vowels; one with distinctive tonal features; one with reduction of unstressed vowels; areas with traces of nasal vowels; an area with a glottal stop; one with high frequency of vowel clusters (while the frequency ratio of vowels to consonants in text does not vary much).

A Historical Phonology of Central Chadic
  • Prosodies and Lexical Reconstruction
  • H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Published online:
    26 May 2022
    Print publication:
    02 June 2022
  • Of all of the African language families, the Chadic languages belonging to the Afroasiatic macro-family are highly internally diverse due to a long history and various scenarios of language contact. This pioneering study explores the development of the sound systems of the 'Central Chadic' languages, a major branch of the Chadic family. Drawing on and comparing field data from about 60 different Central Chadic languages, H. Ekkehard Wolff unpacks the specific phonological principles that underpin the Chadic languages' diverse phonological evolution, arguing that their diversity results to no little extent from historical processes of 'prosodification' of reconstructable segments of the proto-language. The book offers meticulous historical analyses of some 60 words from Proto-Central Chadic, in up to 60 individual modern languages, including both consonants and vowels. Particular emphasis is on tracing the deep-rooted origin and impact of palatalisation and labialisation prosodies within a phonological system that, on its deepest level, recognises only one vowel phoneme */a/.