LANGUAGE

Basic aspects of Mwaghavul language

Consonants: Mwaghavul has 25 consonants. The full list of the consonants is shown in Table 1: (se Blench et al, 2012. X). This table differs from Jungraithmayer (1963: 15) which i.e., listed 5 bilabial plosive, and 2 bilabial implosives among others.

Vowels: Like all A3 languages, Mwaghavul operates a six-vowel system, these are shown in chart below.

The six vowels contrast in length. A change from short vowel to long vowel causes a change in meaning. Length therefore is said to be phonemic. The following table from Blench (2017: 13) exemplifies the contrast in vowel length:

Tone: Mwaghavul is a tonal language. The three lexical tones are Low, Mid and High. For example:

• High tone: kún – three
• Mid tone: kun- be old
• Low tone: kùn- old age

Aside from these, it has contrastive glide tones (rising and falling) that appear to be restricted to the kin terms, pronouns, borrowed lexical items, and exclamations.

Vowel harmony: In Mwaghavul, the front and back vowels (see Figure 2) do not co-occur and cannot be found together in a word. Each, however, can co-occur with either of the central vowels. The exception to this opposition between front and back vowels is mainly in transparent loan words.