Dealing with nasals within the phonological system of Northern Sotho: Another alternative

Abstract

The current approach towards the handling of nasals in the phonological systems of the Bantu languages in general and in that of Northern Sotho in particular, makes it possible for a given nasal to be regarded as a phoneme in a certain phonological environment and as an allophone in another. Such situations are generally referred to as neutralization. In this article, a newly postulated idea, the ‘domical’ phoneme, is distinguished in order to provide a phoneme identification base in terms of which nasal phonemes and nasal allophones can be identified in a more clear-cut manner.