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D.5 Phonological status
D.5.1 Evaluation of phonological status
There is good evidence that the labial flap has been fully incorporated into the
phonological system of a significant number of languages. We have clear evidence of full
phonological status in thirteen languages, and the sound is probably phonological in at
least twelve more. These languages are concentrated in three sub-branches of Adamawa-
Ubangi (Mbum-Day, Banda, and Sere-Ngbaka-Mba), as well as in Central Sudanic.
Further fieldwork will likely increase this number substantially. In this section, we
examine the evidence for the phonological status of the labial flap in five of these
languages: Mono and Ndogo (Ubangian), Karang and Mbum (Adamawan), and
Mangbetu (Central Sudanic).
Specific criteria have been adopted here to evaluate to what extent a segment has
been incorporated into the phonological system of a language:
1. Contrast. Minimal pairs, or near-minimal pairs, between the labial flap and
other labial sounds are good evidence (but not proof) that the sound has been
incorporated into the phonological system of the language.
2. Distribution across grammatical categories. The more grammatical categories
a sound is attested in, the better the evidence that the sound is part of the phonological
system. In many languages, the sound is found only in ideophones, words which
commonly exhibit exceptional phonological shapes and are usually adverbial. Defining
the notion “ideophone” has been particularly troublesome. There has been much debate
as to whether ideophones form a distinct grammatical category or whether they should
rather be defined on semantic or phonological terms (see Welmers 1973: 459ff and
Childs 1994 for helpful discussion). In this paper, we either take the author’s word that a
particular item is an ideophone, or we judge a word to be an ideophone when it seems
fairly obvious, but we are cautious in doing so. In addition, names of animal and plant
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