Aspects of Balondo Phonology

The Balondo language is a Narrow Bantu language spoken in Southwest Cameroun. This research focused on the segments, suprasegments and phonological processes of the Balondo language, to establish the exact phonemic status of the language with spectrographic evidence. The classical phonemic theory and autosegmental theory by Goldsmith (1976) were adopted as the theoretical frame. The autosegmental theory is concerned with the analysis of syllables, tones, and phonological processes while the classical phonemic theory deals with set of conditions that qualifies a sound to become a phoneme. Twenty native speakers were selected for this study using stratified random sampling technique. Two hundred and forty-two words from the 1700 SIL Comparative African Wordlist (SILCAWL) was used for data collection, from where complex and difficult sounds were selected for spectrographic analysis to confirm their acoustic features.  Findings from this study showed that there are twenty-six (26) phonetic consonants among which twenty-one (21) are phonemic in Balondo. The language also attests to seven phonetic vowels among which six are phonemic and are evenly distributed in all positions. The Balondo language operates on three syllable structures which are (V), (N), CV and CVC. Findings also show that tone is an indispensable tool which distinguishes meaning lexically and grammatically. Balondo has two distinctive tones: high [ ́] and low [ ̀]. The downstepped high tone occurrence is usually occasional and non-automatic, as it has restricted distribution. Tonal processes include downstep, downglide, tonal spreading and delinking. There is no underlying contour tone in Balondo. Balondo tones undergo delinking process usually with a floating low tone.  Assimilation is common in all phonological processes. Consonant/vowel ambivalence causes weakening, deletion, labialisation, palatalisation and glide formation. It is suggested that further research be carried out on other aspects of Balondo linguistics as well as a comparative study of Balondo phonology with that of some Nigerian Lower and Upper Cross languages close to Cameroun.