In recent years, so called "cluster projects" have become en vogue within the organization of SIL International: All languages in an area are researched simultaneously by a group of researchers rather than individually. The underlying approach is strictly participatory (Kutsch Lojenga 1996), i.e. giving mother tongue speakers the primary role in the linguistic analysis. The first three workshops in such a project aim at phonological analysis and orthography development: 1. data elicitation, 2. phonology at the word level, 3. phonology and morphology at the phrase and clause levels.
This talk presents some procedures and results from the phonology workshops for five Bantu languages in the Northern Tanzanian Mara region: Jita (E.25), Kuria, Ikoma, Kabwa and Zanaki (all E.40). On the one hand, I will talk about how the phonemes (or rather graphemes) were arrived at for vowels, consonants and tones without employing phonetics. On the other hand, I will report the discovery of vowel harmony systems of ever increasing complexity. For this second part, two models are relevant as background: 1. Hyman's 1999 article on the historical development of vowel harmony systems in Bantu, and 2. Casali's ATR typology. In particular, I will present a harmony conflict in Ikoma and conclude with implications for phonological analysis by mother tongue speakers themselves.
Casali, Rod. 1998. "Predicting ATR Activity", Chicago Linguistic Society 34/1, 55-68.
Hyman, Larry. 1999. "The Historical Interpretation of Vowel Harmony in Bantu", in: Jean-Marie Hombert & Larry Hyman (eds.) Bantu Historical Linguistics, Stanford: CSLI, 235-295.
Kutsch Lojenga, Constance. 1996. "Participatory research in linguistics", Notes on Linguistics 73: 13-27.