African languages and phonological theory

I’ve been asked to write about the mutual influence of African languages and phonological theory, specifically addressing two questions: What and how have African language contributed to phonological theory? What and how have linguistic theories contributed to the understanding African phonology? To treat these questions properly would be a major undertaking, first, because of the large number of African languages, and, second, because of their considerable diversity. To cite Greenberg’s (1963) influentual classification, the roughly 2000 languages of Africa fall into four major linguistic phyla: Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan (see Heine & Nurse 2000 for a more recent overview of African languages and their classification). Except for the click consonants of the last family (which spill over into some neighboring Bantu languages that have “borrowed” them), the phonological phenomena found in African languages are duplicated elsewhere on the globe, though not always in as concentrated a fashion. The vast majority of African languages are tonal, and perhaps most also have vowel harmony (especially the type known as “ATR harmony”). Not surprisingly, then, African languages have figured disproportionately in theoretical treatments of these two phenomena. On the other hand, if there is a phonological property where African languages are underrepresented, it would have to be stress systems—which rarely, if ever, achieve the complexity found in other (mostly non-tonal) languages. However, it should be noted that African languages have contributed significantly to virtually every other aspect of phonological theory.