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If = were reinterpreted as a low front vowel rather than a low central vowel, Mono
would then have three front vowels, E, A, and =, two central vowels, and , and three
back vowels, K, , and . This analysis would result in a system which agrees with
Crothers’ universal concerning vowel height distinctions. It also results in a symmetric
system if we followed Crothers in classifying vowels into peripheral (front, low, and
back) and interior (central, but non-low) groupings. This reanalyzed vowels system is
shown in Figure 2.4:
E K
A
=
Figure 2.4: Reanalyzed Mono vowel system
There is some phonetic justification for this reanalysis. In Section 8.2.1, I note
that the vowel = in Mono is further forward in the vowel space than the corresponding
vowel = of English, which is phonetically closer to [)].
The mid central vowel is the most common vowel in Mono discourse, followed
closely by =. Cross-linguistically, = is the most common vowel (Maddieson 1997), but in
languages with central vowels, is often the most common. English and French offer
familiar examples of this. In Mono, the frequency of may be due to the fact that it
occurs in several words which are quite common in discourse, as shown in (14):
(14) Common words containing
‘1SG’
‘2SG’
J5 J5 J5 J5 ‘3SG’
( ( ( ( ‘same subject’
( ( ( ( ‘INF’
‘DET’
@( @( @( @( ‘be (equative)’
(I (I (I (I ‘be (existential)’
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