Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
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Hirosi Nakagawa
, Daniel Auer
Abstract
This article reports some results of the first large-scale, comprehensive survey of the phonological systems of the Khoisan languages of the Kalahari Basin Area. These languages are famous for their large sets of click phonemes, a typologically rare characteristic otherwise found only in a limited number of languages worldwide. They are also unique because the click phonemes carry a high functional load in terms of phonemic and lexical distinctions in the respective systems. Finally, these languages have strikingly similar and highly skewed root phonotactics. The article provides empirical support for a range of claims and speculations that have been made about these typologically rare systems of the Kalahari Basin Area.
Funding source: Israel Science Foundation
Award Identifier / Grant number: 2892/20
Funding source: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Award Identifier / Grant number: Kakenhi (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) #1
Award Identifier / Grant number: Kakenhi (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) #2
Acknowledgements
The project was funded by the grant Kakenhi (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) #16H01925 for 2016–2019 and #20H00011 for 2020–2024. Alena Witzlack-Makarevich gratefully acknowledges the support of the grant no. 2892/20 of the Israel Science Foundation.
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Author contributions: All authors designed research, authors contributed to data collection as indicated in Table 1; all authors analyzed data; H. N and A. W.-M. wrote the paper, A. W.-M. carried out data aggregation and visualization.
Appendix

C1 in the word list dataset.
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Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0047).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Current research in phonological typology
- Investigating the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ of global phonological typology
- Canonical phonology and criterial conflicts: relating and resolving four dilemmas of phonological typology
- Refining explanation in Evolutionary Phonology: macro-typologies and targeted typologies in action
- The prosodic foot beyond prosodic prominence: a preliminary survey
- On the comparability of prosodic categories: why ‘stress’ is difficult
- Bootstrap co-occurrence networks of consonants and the Basic Consonant Inventory
- Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: how often and by which sequences?
- Diachronic phonological typology: understanding inventory structure through sound change dynamics
- Place typology and evolution of implosives in Indo-Aryan languages
- Estimating areal effects in typology: a case study of African phoneme inventories
- Word prosody of African versus European-origin words in Afro-European creoles
- Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
- The typological frequency of consonants is highly predictive of their order of acquisition in English
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Current research in phonological typology
- Investigating the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ of global phonological typology
- Canonical phonology and criterial conflicts: relating and resolving four dilemmas of phonological typology
- Refining explanation in Evolutionary Phonology: macro-typologies and targeted typologies in action
- The prosodic foot beyond prosodic prominence: a preliminary survey
- On the comparability of prosodic categories: why ‘stress’ is difficult
- Bootstrap co-occurrence networks of consonants and the Basic Consonant Inventory
- Frequent violation of the sonority sequencing principle in hundreds of languages: how often and by which sequences?
- Diachronic phonological typology: understanding inventory structure through sound change dynamics
- Place typology and evolution of implosives in Indo-Aryan languages
- Estimating areal effects in typology: a case study of African phoneme inventories
- Word prosody of African versus European-origin words in Afro-European creoles
- Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
- The typological frequency of consonants is highly predictive of their order of acquisition in English