Labio-coronal fricatives in Sengwato

This paper will present evidence for the existence of doubly articulated labio-coronal fricatives in Sengwato (a northern dialect of the Bantu language Setswana). The existence of stops and fricatives that incorporate all two-way combinations of labial, coronal, and dorsal articulations is predicted by phonological feature-geometry models [E. Sagey, MIT dissertation, 1986]. According to Ladefoged and Maddieson [Sounds of the World’s Languages (1996), p. 331], however, ‘‘the world’s languages do not use segments that combine two fricative elements.’’ Ladefoged and Maddieson analyzed reported labio-coronal fricatives in Sepedi, a sister language to Setswana, and concluded that the fricative articulations were sequenced. In this presentation, spectrographic analysis and video images from two speakers of Sengwato will be presented, demonstrating that in words like [o/sa] ‘‘to burn,’’ speakers do use two simultaneous fricative articulations. Spectrographic analysis shows a steady-state fricative, not a sequence; and comparison of video images shows that the labial constriction is more extreme than the addition of approximantlike rounding. The data to be presented here will show that, in contrast to Sepedi, Sengwato [o/s] is a true doubly articulated fricative. This type of sound is indeed represented in the repertoire of human languages.