"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."
AUTHOR: Olson, Kenneth S. TITLE: The Phonology of Mono SERIES: Publications in Linguistics #140 PUBLISHER: SIL International YEAR: 2005
Mary Paster, Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Pomona College
OVERVIEW
In The Phonology of Mono, Kenneth S. Olson describes the phonological system of the Bili dialect of Mono, which is a Banda language spoken by approximately 62,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This book is a substantially revised version of Olson's 2001 University of Chicago dissertation. The Phonology of Mono is primarily a descriptive work but also points out issues of theoretical relevance that arise in the analysis of the language.
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter discusses the classification, history, ethnography, and dialectology of the Mono language and people. At the end of this chapter, Olson identifies some of the most interesting features of the language, each of which is discussed in more detail in a subsequent chapter. Some of these features include implosives with unusual phonetic properties, an eight-vowel system with a front vowel inventory that is smaller than the back vowel inventory (an unusual situation that is predicted by some theories not to exist), some interesting issues in the interaction of phonological processes that repair subminimal words, and finally, the presence of a bilabial ~ labiodental flap, which was part of the basis for Olson's successful campaign to introduce a labiodental flap symbol into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in 2005, an effort that was rewarded with a brief period of nationwide media coverage that was mostly accurate and attracted positive attention towards the field of linguistics.
Chapter 2: Phonemes
In this chapter, Olson very thoroughly identifies and provides evidence for the contrastive segments of the Mono consonant and vowel inventories. Olson gives many examples of each consonant in multiple environments. These examples are systematically introduced and very well organized. In the section on labial consonants, some frames from a video are provided showing the production of the labial flap; these are informative and entertaining for anyone interested in this unusual segment. Following the presentation of consonants, Olson describes the vowel inventory, which is unusual for two reasons, namely that there is no /E/ (here, a low front vowel) in an otherwise symmetrical vowel system, and consequently that the front vowel inventory is smaller than the back vowel inventory. Olson discusses these facts in the context of distinctive feature theory (Chomsky and Halle 1968) and a claim by Crothers (1978) that the ''number of height distinctions in front vowels is equal to or greater than the number in back vowels'' (122). Olson debates the merits of reanalyzing the feature specifications of the vowel /a/ so that it is a front vowel rather than a central vowel; such a move would mean that the vowel inventory of Mono does not counterexemplify Crothers' proposed universal. Olson seems to adopt this reanalysis of /a/, pointing out that Mono [a] is phonetically more front (has higher F2) than the corresponding a vowel in, e.g., English.
Chapter 3: Tone
The tone chapter, while not as thorough as the preceding chapter, nonetheless provides numerous examples of tonal contrasts in Mono. Olson demonstrates that tone is used in Mono to make both lexical and grammatical distinctions, and the language is shown to exhibit a three-way tonal contrast among high (H), mid (M), and low (L). In addition to the three level tones, there are some contour tones in the language that are made up of combinations of the level tones. It is not made clear here exactly which contours exist in the language; each of the possible binary combinations of the three level tones is attested somewhere in the book, with the exception of a MH contour, which I was not able to find in any example. Olson points out in chapter 6 (page 84) that the LH rising tone is rare, then says later in chapter 7 (page 90) that rising tones in general are rare in Mono, but I did not find any explicit statement that the MH contour does not exist. After establishing the tonal contrasts of the language, Olson anticipates some tonal phenomena, such as polarity, that will presumably be covered in more detail later in the book.
Chapter 4: Labialization and Palatalization
There is a lengthy discussion in chapter 4 regarding the status of apparent secondary articulations in Mono. In the end, Olson appears to conclude that labialized and palatalized consonants are actually sequences of two consonants (a consonant followed by a glide), but the issue is not fully resolved here.
Chapter 5: The Syllable
This chapter presents the attested syllable shapes of Mono. There is some good discussion of peripheral syllable types that Olson is able to reduce to more basic types, the overall result of which is that Mono syllables are shown to have the shape (C)(G)V (where C is any consonant, G is a glide, and V is a vowel). A fourth type, CV:, is shown to be a variant of CV with contour tone-induced vowel lengthening. It is implied (page 68) that the syllable type CLV (where L is a liquid) is a variant of /CVLV/, where the two vowels are identical, so CLV results from elision or shortening of the first vowel and does not constitute a basic syllable shape. However, at the end of the chapter (page 70), Olson seems to advocate for underlying /CLV/ and posits a vowel epenthesis process that applies in the environment C_LV, resulting in CVLV (where the quality of the epenthesized vowel is identical to the underlying vowel). Thus, the syllable shape inventory may need to be expanded to (C)({G, L})V.
Chapter 6: Word Shapes
Evidence is provided in chapter 6 for a word minimality condition, which is that nouns and adjectives must have at least two syllables in their surface forms. Subminimal words can be repaired via augmentation and/or the epenthesis process introduced in chapter 5. Augmentation inserts an underspecified vowel (whose value for [+/-low] agrees with the stem vowel) at the beginning of a subminimal word, and the other features of this vowel are filled in either with default values or based on the stem vowel via an optional leftward vowel spreading rule. Olson points out that in the case of a /CLV/ root, both augmentation and epenthesis apply, resulting in a three-syllable surface form, VCVLV. The apparent overapplication of processes that repair subminimal words is made sense of using rule ordering. First, the augmentation rule (which is triggered in subminimal words) applies to /CLV/, resulting in VCLV. Then, epenthesis applies since there is a CLV sequence here (recall that epenthesis is not specifically motivated by the minimality condition but rather applies to any CLV sequence), and this results in VCVLV. Thus the apparent overapplication of augmentation is resolved through rule ordering.
Chapter 7: Morphology
This chapter discusses morphological processes in Mono including affixation, prefixing reduplication, tone and segmental changes, and compounding. Olson notes (page 88) that the ''lack of suffixes in Mono is typologically unusual''; this is temporarily very exciting in light of Greenberg's (1963) generalization that exclusively prefixing languages are very rare. However, it is revealed later (page 115) that there are at least a couple of suffixes in the language, so the ''lack of suffixes'' refers to the small number of suffixes and does not mean that Mono is exclusively prefixing. Still, the predominance of prefixes in Mono is typologically interesting if not exceedingly rare.
Several phonological rules of Mono are summarized in this morphology chapter in a section titled 'Phonological Processes Which Cross Morpheme or Word Boundaries'. The rules described here are leftward vowel spreading (this is the rule introduced in chapter 6 that spreads root vowel features to augment vowels), hiatus resolution, glide formation, and the optional raising of /a/ to mid (the ''carrot'' vowel) when preceded or followed by a high vowel.
The hiatus resolution processes refer specifically to sequences of a schwa followed by another vowel. There are three possible surface forms that may result from such sequences. The first is that the schwa and the following vowel surface unchanged, since hiatus resolution is optional. The second is that the schwa takes on the quality of the following vowel. The third is that the schwa can be deleted, but this is only possible when the schwa has the same tone as the following vowel. Though Olson does not point this out, this tonal restriction on schwa deletion is evidence for a one-tone-per-mora restriction in Mono. In the tone chapter, Olson mentions (page 44) that vowels with a contour tone are always phonetically long. But if we assume that there is actually a phonological process of contour-induced lengthening driven by a restriction that each mora may bear only one tone, then we can also explain the restriction on schwa deletion. Presumably if a schwa is deleted, its tone will need to be expressed somewhere, and a following immediately adjacent vowel seems a likely place for it to end up. If the tone of the schwa is identical to that of the second vowel, then the identical tones can simply fuse when the schwa is deleted. But if the tones are different, then the deletion of schwa and association of its tone to the following vowel will result in a contour tone on a short vowel, which is not allowed. Alternatively, one could assume that the schwa actually is deleted in this environment, yielding an intermediate stage with a contour tone on the short vowel, which then undergoes the contour tone lengthening process mentioned above, so that actually there is really no tone-based restriction on schwa deletion but only the appearance of such a restriction due to the interaction of deletion and lengthening.
Chapter 8: Acoustic Phonetics
The phonetics chapter is quite detailed and informative for those wishing to know about the phonetics of the language. This chapter presents the results of an acoustic study of every consonant in the language, complete with very nice screenshots showing sample waveforms and spectrograms for each. The phonetic analysis of the vowels of Mono is also very careful and thorough. This chapter can serve as a nice model or case study for anyone wishing to include a phonetics chapter in a descriptive grammar, because the methodology for doing phonetic measurements and calculations is so meticulously laid out and the results so clearly presented.
Appendices
The body of the book is followed by a lengthy set of appendices totaling 110 pages. Appendix A includes the narrative text 'The Elephant, the Turtle, and the Hippo', a procedural text on preparing fields for planting, and ten proverbs. Each text consists of a transcription, a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown, morpheme-by-morpheme gloss, and an English translation. The texts are followed by frequency counts of all of the consonants, vowels, and tones in the texts. Appendix B is a wordlist, which includes reference numbers for the SIL Comparative African Word List. This is a good-sized wordlist: by my estimate, it contains over two thousand words. Appendix C is a list of files containing Mono recordings, and wordlists that were used to make the recordings. This particular appendix will not be relevant to most readers since the book does not come with the recordings. Finally, appendix D contains additional examples and the details of the phonetic measurements presented in chapter 8.
References and Indexes
The appendices are followed by references, an author index, and a subject index. Both indexes are helpful and thorough.
DISCUSSION
This book constitutes an extremely valuable contribution to the study of African languages and language in general. It is well written and edited, and very nicely organized and presented. Although some work had previously been done on the language, the Bili dialect had only been studied by a couple of researchers, and this book contains a very substantial amount of data and analysis never published before. The few criticisms that I point out below should not be taken to undermine the importance or significance of this excellent book.
However, there are some issues here that warrant a bit of further consideration. The first is some uncertainty as to the place of phonetic data in the analysis of the phonological system. This is a problem more generally in phonology and is not unique to this book. In the introduction to the phonetics chapter, Olson implies (page 121) that auditory impressionistic transcriptions need to be checked via phonetic analysis in order to be accurate and useful. While there can be no doubt that phonetic analysis often provides valuable insights into phonological processes, phonologists may take issue with the notion that a phonological description is not complete without phonetic corroboration. In one particular case, the author's tendency to look to phonetics in analyzing phonological patterns leads to a dubious conclusion from a phonological perspective. This happens in the discussion in chapter 2 of the possible reanalysis of /a/ as a front vowel rather than a central vowel, where the author's justification for the reanalysis is the frontness of Mono /a/ relative to its correspondent in English. The feature specifications for a particular vowel in a given language do not always correlate directly with its phonetic values when comparing values for vowels even in the same language, so it is unclear how a comparison with an English vowel can shed any light on the features of Mono /a/. In a featural analysis, it is more important to find out how the sound functions phonologically than whether its F2 puts it in a category with the other front or back vowels. In this case, there is a rule that targets /a/, changing it to the carrot vowel, but since this vowel is not phonemic in the language, we cannot use this as direct evidence for the feature specifications of /a/. In cases where a phonetic basis is used to argue for a particular categorization of the segment, it is preferable to compare it with other segments in the same language. Based on a visual inspection of the plot of the Mono vowel space (F1 vs. F2) on page 148, [a] looks like a phonetically central vowel. This makes the comparison with English seem even less reliable.
A second problem is some inconsistency in the analysis. For example, in chapter 5, Olson seems to say that CLV syllables are underlyingly /CVLV/. Later, at the end of chapter 5 and in chapter 6, it is implied that surface CVLV results from the application of vowel epenthesis to /CLV/. But even later in chapter 8 (pages 145, 152), there are various references to shortening, deletion, and elision applying to the first vowel in /CVLV/ resulting in CLV, so this suggests that the /CVLV/ analysis implied early in chapter 5 may be Olson's intended analysis after all. One way to reconcile these inconsistencies is to assume that the use of terms like 'shortening', 'deletion', and 'elision' are not intended to refer to real phonological processes. So if there is no actual inconsistency in the analysis, then there is at least some imprecise use of terminology. This problem stands out in a work that is otherwise so meticulous in its attention to detail.
A final issue is the lack of follow-up on the tonal polarity process alluded to early in the book. Polarity is never analyzed in detail, and no formal polarity rule is provided. Olson notes that polarity has not been well documented for 3-tone languages, so it would have been nice to see the details of it here, although the lack of examples of polarity in 3-tone languages may be due to the fact that depending on one's interpretation, the concept of 'polarity' only makes sense in a two-tone system. In Mono, one could assume that the polar morpheme in question (the directional prefix ga-, discussed on page 112) is underlyingly H-toned and undergoes a (morpheme-specific) tonal dissimilation rule before H-initial stems. Alternatively, there could be two suppletive allomorphs of ga-, one that has L tone and is used before H-toned stems, and one that has H tone and occurs elsewhere. Under either analysis, no 'polarity' applies if we assume that true polarity would involve an underlyingly toneless morpheme undergoing a rule that gives it the tone that is the polar opposite of what follows.
Despite these issues, The Phonology of Mono is a fine and enjoyable read, and will no doubt serve as an important resource on this interesting language for many years to come.
REFERENCES
Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.
Crothers, John. 1978. Typology and universals of vowel systems. Pp. 93-152 in Joseph H. Greenberg, ed. Universals of Language 2: Phonology. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press.
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. Pp. 73-113 in Joseph H. Greenberg, ed. Universals of Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Mary Paster is an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics and
Cognitive Science at Pomona College. She recently completed a dissertation,
Phonological Conditions on Affixation, at the University of California,
Berkeley. Her primary research interests are in phonology, morphology, and
the phonology-morphology interface, and she has published descriptive and
theoretical papers on several African languages.
