Lozi is a Bantu language spoken predominantly in south-western Zambia. It possesses five phonemic vowel qualities and, as is common across Bantu, is noted to exhibit a form of progressive vowel height harmony. Unusually, however, Lozi lacks any alternations targeting front vowels, with only the back rounded vowels showing alternations: high [u] occurs following [i, u, e, a] but mid [o] is found after [o] itself. Furthermore, harmony is said to be limited to verb roots and following extensions, specifically reversives such as -ulul- . This paper presents a case study of vowel-pair frequencies in Lozi in both verbs and noun, where this restriction is supposedly not active, using lexicographic data. As expected based on the generalisation above, the results show that the pairs [a.o, e.o, i.o, o.u, u.o] are all highly infrequent in verbs but that [o.u] is, uniquely, also comparably infrequent in nouns. After an examination of the main data set and supplementary data, I argue this suggests that there exists in Lozi a synchronically active phonotactic restriction against this vowel pair that is blind to part of speech which applies in the non-prefixal domain, with the remaining vowel-pair gaps in verbs now being nothing more than historical residue.
Impact Factor: 0.6
Journal
Open Access
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics
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Edited by:
Language:
English
First published:
January 1, 1979
Publication Frequency:
2 issues per year
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The Journal of African Languages and Ling uist ics was founded in 1979 and has established itself as an important refereed forum for publications in African linguistics. The Journal of African Languages and Linguistics welcomes original contribution s on all aspects of African language studies, synchronic as well as diachronic, theoretical as well as data-oriented. The journal further contains a list of recently published books on African languages and linguistics, which many libraries find to be of use for the acquisition of books. The Journal of African Languages and Linguistics is a peer-reviewed journal of international scope.
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The Journal of African Languages and Linguistics was founded in 1979.
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Open AccessAn exploration of vowel-pair frequencies in Lozi: implications for phonological analysesApril 28, 2026
| Journal Impact Factor | 0.6 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| 5-year Journal Impact Factor | 0.7 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| Journal Citation Indicator | 0.17 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| CiteScore | 0.5 | 2024, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2025) |
| SCImago Journal Rank | 0.13 | 2024, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2025; Data Source: Scopus) |
| Source Normalized Impact per Paper | 0.282 | 2024, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2025; Data Source: Scopus) |
| European Reference Index for the Humanities | 0 |
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Nancy C. Kula
Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics (LUCL)
Faculty of Humanities
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Co-Editors
Sara Petrollino
Faculty of Humanities
Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics
LUCL T&C van Afrika
Room number 0.25
Reuvensplaats 3-4
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Jenneke van der Wal
Faculty of Humanities
Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics
LUCL T&C van Afrika
Room number 1.25
Reuvensplaats 3-4
2311 BE Leiden
Emeritus Founding Editor
Paul Newman
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
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Enoch O. Aboh
Azeb Amha
Anneke O. Breedveld
Maarten Kossmann
Constance Kutsch Lojenga
Maarten Mous
Saskia van Putten
Thilo C. Schadeberg
Harry Stroomer
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AnnaMarie Diagne, (Dakar, Senegal)
Ellen Hurst Harosh (Cape Town, South Africa)
Larry M. Hyman (Berkeley, USA)
Zelealem Leyew (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
Emmanuel Ngue Um (Yaounde , Camaroon)
AKUMBU Pius Wuchu (Paris, France)
Bert Remijsen (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Sharon Rose (San Diego, USA)
Serge Sagna (Manchester, UK)
Hannah Sande (Berkeley, USA)
Lameen Souag (Paris, France)
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Journal information
Additional information
eISSN:
1613-3811
ISSN:
0167-6164
Language:
English
Publisher:
De Gruyter Mouton
Additional information
First published:
January 1, 1979
Publication Frequency:
2 issues per year
eISSN:
1613-3811
ISSN:
0167-6164
Audience(s) for this journal
researchers and professionals in the field of African languages and linguistics
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