Vowel harmony: The behaviour of the vowel /a/ in [+ATR] environment
Constance Kutsch Lojenga, Leiden University / SIL
The aim of this paper is to document the behaviour of the vowel /a/ when found in a [+ATR]
environment in three Bantu languages spoken in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
The three Bantu languages concerned are Budu, Bila, and Lika, all classified as Bantu D. All
three languages have a nine-vowel system with ATR harmony. The vowel /a/ does not have
a [+ATR] counterpart in the underlying structure.
For each of the three languages, I look at vowel harmony first of all from a static perspective,
investigating V1 – V2 cooccurrences and cooccurrence restrictions within roots. It is found
that, in general, the vowel /a/ is transparent in that it can cooccur both with [–ATR] and
[+ATR] vowels within roots.
Following that, I study the dynamic aspect of vowel harmony, in which I look at behaviour of
the vowel /a/ occurring in noun-class prefixes and verb-final suffixes when attached to a
[+ATR] root. In all three languages, the vowel /o/ may occur as [+ATR] counterpart of /a/;
however, the details differ from one language to the other.
Finally, I consider some cases of idiosyncratic behaviour in numeral prefixes, and a case of
[–ATR] dominance in Lika, in which a final root vowel /o/ is changed to /a/.