The classical laws and rules in Bantu languages: How plausible are they?

Abstract

This article examines some of the common rules found in Bantu languages. Some of these rules are general and have been termed ‘Laws’, because of their regularity of occurrence or geographical spread, as synchronic and/or diachronic processes. In fact, most of them could be justified by one of the universal phonological mechanisms, such as assimilation, dissimilation, segment deletion and segment insertion. This study uses mainly secondary data, from comparative Bantu studies, to describe each of these processes, so as to determine their phonetic plausibility and geographical extent in the Bantu speaking area. The article points out cases which appear to be ‘lawless’, that is cases in which the respective changes are not supported by plausible phonetic explanation. Such apparent ‘lawless’ cases have been termed ‘crazy’. However, it is argued in this study that rules may look crazy, but are not born crazy. Some solutions are therefore proposed based on evolutionary trends, affecting some of the sounds in specific phonic environments.