Stem-Initial Prominence in Mungbam

Mungbam [mij] is an endangered and underdocumented Bantoid (Yemne-Kimbi) language of the Northwest province of Cameroon with approximatly 2000 speakers divided between five dialects (Munken, Ngun, Biya, Abar and Missong) (Good et al., in press). The goal of this presentation is to draw attention to prominence asymmetries in Mungbam words which indicate that the first syllable of noun and verb stems is the most prominent, and can be analyzed as bearing an abstract accent, even though no overt phonetic correlates of accent have been positively identified. Abstract (i.e. phonetically covert) prominence on stem-initial syllables is well-attested in African languages, especially in the languages of Nigeria and Cameroon (cf. Downing 2004: 104, §6.6; Hyman 2010: §4), though data from more languages is needed as understanding of this phenomenon develops. The current presentation should then be considered as an effort to provide detailed data relevant to this phenomenon from a new language, rather than to offer any theoretically innovative interpretation. An expected implication of treating prominence asymmetries as exponents of abstract accent is that the accented position is a metrical head within some well-defined foot structure. While it seems probable that there is evidence for foot structure in Mungbam, the present discussion will be limited to showing how several types of evidence converge on indicating the stem-initial position as the most prominent within words. After outlining the possible word shapes for Mungbam noun and verbs (section 2), I will show how consonant (section 3), vowel (section 4) and tone contrasts (section 5) are to a large extent positionally restricted, with the full range of options only being available for stem-initial syllables. Data presented were collected in Cameroon by the author in 2010. Data from different dialects will be freely mixed, with the understanding that the same general patterns are valid across dialects, despite minor differences.