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linguistic universals and tendencies. Maddieson (1997), for example, sets forth a list of
properties which occur in a significant number of the world’s languages and are
candidates for being considered universals. Some of the putative universal properties that
Maddieson discusses which would be fruitful to examine in Mono include:
• Higher vowels have a higher F0 than lower vowels (Ohala & Eukel 1987; Whalen
& Levitt 1995).
• Higher vowels have a shorter duration than lower vowels (Lehiste 1970).
• Higher vowels have a greater tendency toward devoicing than lower vowels
(Jaeger 1978).
• The vowel before a voiced consonant is longer than before its voiceless
counterpart.
• F0 tends to be higher after a voiceless consonant than after a voiced one.
• Bilabial stops have a longer closure duration than velar stops.
• The voice onset time (VOT) of velar consonants is longer than the VOT of
coronal consonants, and the VOT of coronal consonants is longer than the VOT of
labial consonants (Lisker & Abramson 1964, Byrd 1993).
These include:
There are other phonetic properties which would be worth examining as well.
• My auditory impressions indicate that the Mono D has a greater amount of friction
than the English D.
• Many Mono speakers are bilingual in Lingala, a Bantu language with two tones.
According to Maddieson (per. comm.), for speakers who are fluent in two
languages, one of which has three tones (High, Mid, Low) and one which has two
tones (High and Low), there are differing results as to what kind of
correspondence there is between the tones of the two languages. For bilinguals in
Hausa and Nupe, Hause High corresponds to Nupe High, Hausa Mid corresponds
to Nupe Low, and Hausa Low corresponds to Nupe ∅. In other cases, the High of
the two-tone language is between the High and Mid of the three-tone language,
and the Low of the two-tone language is between the Mid and Low of the threetone
language.
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