Preliminaries to the phonetic structure of the Bantu language Mpiemo

Abstract

This paper explores some of the major phonetic features of the Bantu language Mpiemo (A86c, according to Guthrie 1971) spoken in the border area between the Central African Republic and Cameroon. As pointed out by Maddieson (2003:15), phonetic studies of the Bantu languages are rare despite their great diversities and potential contribution to the comparative historical research of Bantu, the only exception being the studies on the clicks and other exotic consonants in the southern area of the African continent. In addition, the phonetic structure of Mpiemo may be of special interest since this language belongs to the A group that is considered to be among the oldest Bantu languages, and yet so little is known about Mpiemo’s exact phonetic characteristics. Such a study is also an urgent one as Mpiemo is going through a drastic change due to the multilingualism in the area. The analysis of the phonetic characteristics of Mpiemo presented in this paper is based on the recording of items in a word list Thornell obtained during field trips to Nola in the Central African Republic in 2000 and 2004. The present study is founded on the basic phonological descriptions of Mpiemo by Thornell (1999, 2001) and Fester (2002). Since the data analysed constituted a recording of a general word list rather than a list focusing on any specific phonetic features, this paper should be regarded as preliminary study on which further and more specific phonetic studies can be based.

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