Language Contact in Kera (Chadic)

Authors: 
Issue Date: 
2012
Date Created: 
2012
Publisher: 
Cascadilla Proceedings Project
Publisher Place: 
Somerville, MA, USA
Conference: 
41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL)
Extent: 
pages 171-183
Abstract: 
French voicing affects the Voice Onset Time and the fundamental frequency in Kera. Production and perception experiments show phonological changes according to location and gender. Village speakers maintain a 3-way tonal contrast while town speakers have 2 tones and a VOT contrast. The contact influences both L1 and L2. Yet they maintain distinct phonetic settings for the two languages. In tone production, village women are more conservative than village men, while the women in town are the least conservative with almost total loss of tone. We will briefly consider contact effects on French vowels and the introduction of loan words from Tupuri, Arabic and French.
Publication Status: 
Published
Country: 
Chad
Subject Languages: 
Content Language: 
Field: 
Work Type: 
Nature of Work: 
Is Part Of: 
Bruce Connell and Nicholas Rolle, eds., Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL): African Languages in Contact
Entry Number: 
53572