Phantom consonants in Basaa

Basaa, a zone A Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, is only one among many genetically unrelated languages for which the positing of phonetically null phantom consonants facilitates a phonological account of certain otherwise unexpected surface forms encountered in derivational paradigms. Clements & Keyser (1983), Marlett & Stemberger (1983), Keyser & Kiparsky (1984), Crowhurst (1988) and Hualde (1992) propose that phantom consonants exist in Turkish, Seri, French, Finnish, Southern Paiute and Aranese Gascon, for example, syllabifying as onsets or codas where appropriate and in certain cases inducing the gemination of an adjacent consonantal segment or the lengthening of a preceding tautosyllabic vowel, as we shall see takes place in Basaa.