Phonetics of Voiceless Laterals in Five Southern Bantu Languages

Abstract

Voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ] is commonly found in Southern Bantu languages, even though it is reported to be an uncommon sound from cross-linguistic perspectives. This paper draws data from five Southern Bantu languages (Siswati, Southern Ndebele, Xitsonga, Sesotho, and Northern Sotho) and reports acoustic characteristics of lateral fricatives. The results demonstrate that duration and intensity do not differ among the languages. Concerning the four spectral moments, Siswati shows higher center of gravity and lower skewness compared to other four languages, showing that lateral fricatives do not have uniform phonetic realizations. The paper then focuses on lateral fricatives in Siswati and Southern Ndebele because they both belong to the Nguni group, and they are spoken in the vicinity of each other. The lateral fricative is acoustically placed between alveolar and palatal fricatives in Siswati, but between alveolar and velar fricatives in Southern Ndebele. Our analysis suggests that the production of lateral fricative in Siswati and Southern Ndebele may differ due to the fricative inventory in each language; velar fricatives in Southern Ndebele allow more acoustic space for the realization of lateral fricatives, but palatal fricatives in Siswati rather limit the acoustic space. This paper also discusses how the phonetic findings connect with the diachronic studies on lateral fricatives.