Metathesis in Language 2.0

Birom

Language Family
Niger-Congo
Subgroup
—
Area
—

Summary

Historical prefixes *ú- and *í- in Birom are synchronically realized as postconsonantal glides [w] and [j].

Type(s) of metathesis

Type Status Optionality Position Location
a. CV Diachronic Obligatory Adjacent Root-initial

Case types and qualities

Examples

Singular (class 3)
Plural (class 4)
 
pwɛl
pɛ̀l
'moon'
 
rwí
rìí
'door'
 
gwat
gàt
'medicine'

 

 

Singular (class 9)
Plural (class 10)
 
njàma
njama
'animal'
 
sjòk
sjok
'bee'
 
vjɔ̀l
vjɔl
'goat'

 

Conditions

No conditions could be found

Motivations

Blevins and Garrett (1998) attributes this process to "the resegmentation of elongated palatalizationa nd labialization phases, an extreme version of the common type of change where high-vowel loss results in distinctive secondary articulations on adjacent consonants" (Blevins and Garrett 1998: 514).

Symbols

V́ = high tone
V̀ = low tone

Comments

Blevins & Garrett (1998) cites Bouquiaux (1970) for the case of Birom, which analyzes the historical metathesis as a synchronic glide infixation rule.

Bibliography

Blevins, Juliette, and Andrew Garrett. 1998. The origins of consonant-vowel metathesis. Language 74.3 (September): 508–556. doi:10.2307/417792