Kenneth S. Olson

Current Research

• The Labiodental Flap: A speech sound found in central Africa.
• The Mono Language: A language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Niger-Congo Classification: The largest language family in the world.

The Labiodental Flap

Kenneth Olson conducts research (along with John Hajek of the University of Melbourne) on the labiodental flap, a speech sound found mostly in the north central part of Africa. The research includes documenting its geographic and genetic distribution, studying its articulatory and acoustic features, and examining its phonological status. A labiodental articulation is most common cross-linguistically, but a bilabial variety is also attested (e.g. in the Mono language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The term labial flap encompasses both the labiodental and bilabial articulations.

In May 2005 the Council of the International Phonetic Association voted to adopt a symbol for the labiodental flap. The symbol they chose is the right-hook v, shown above.

• See the International Phonetic Association announcement on the adoption of the symbol.
• Listen to the NPR Weekend Edition radio interview with Dr. Olson about the labiodental flap.

The right-hook v symbol was added to Unicode in version 5.1 at code point U+2C71. Fonts that includes the symbol at this code point include Doulos SIL, Charis SIL, and Code2000. The Unicode name for the symbol is latin small letter v with right hook. Note that this is different from the latin small letter v with hook symbol at code point U+028B. The right-hook v character is similar to the Cyrillic small letter izhitsa (U+0475).

The current Braille IPA draft, developed by Robert Englebretson in conjunction with the International Council on English Braille, contains the labiodental flap (dots 235–1236).

The first known mention of the labiodental flap in the literature was in 1907 by the French Catholic missionary Pierre Cotel, who worked in what is present-day Central African Republic. In his small grammar and dictionary of the Togbo dialect of Banda, Cotel describes a sound that "se prononce en faisant rentrer la lèvre inférieure sous les incisives de la mâchoire supérieure" (p. x).

The first known use of the right-hook v symbol to represent the labiodental flap sound was in a 1988 article by Didier Demolin in the Belgian Journal of Linguistics. Demolin's tentative description of the articulation of the sound in this article was refined in his later work.

Key publications on the labiodental flap

• Anonby, Erik John. 2007. The labial flap in Mambay: Phonological rarity or fundamental element? Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 28. 1–17.
• Cotel, Pierre. 1907. Dictionnaire français-banda et banda-français précédé d'un essai de grammaire banda. Brazzaville: Mission Catholique.
• Demolin, Didier. 1988. Some problems of phonological reconstruction in Central Sudanic. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 3. 53–102.
• Demolin, Didier & Bernard Teston. 1996. Labiodental flaps in Mangbetu. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 26(2). 103–111.
• Doke, Clement Martyn. 1931. A comparative study in Shona phonetics. Johannesburg: The University of Witwatersrand Press.
• Erard, Michael. 2005. With sound from Africa, the phonetic alphabet expands. New York Times, December 13, 2005, p. D4.
• Greenberg, Joseph H. 1983. Some areal characteristics of African languages. In I. R. Dihoff (ed.), Current Approaches to African Linguistics 1, 3–22. Dordrecht: Foris.
• Ladefoged, Peter. 1968. A phonetic study of West African languages, 2nd edn. London: Cambridge University Press.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2005. The phonology of Mono (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics 140). Dallas: SIL & UTA.
  • This is the published version of Olson's 2001 dissertation from the University of Chicago: The phonology and morphology of Mono.
• Olson, Kenneth S. & John Hajek. 1999. The phonetic status of the labial flap. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 29(2). 101–114.
• Olson, Kenneth S. & John Hajek. 2003. Crosslinguistic insights on the labial flap. Linguistic Typology 7(2). 157–186.
• Olson, Kenneth S. & John Hajek. 2004. A crosslinguistic lexicon of the labial flap. Linguistic Discovery 2(2). 21–57. http://linguistic-discovery.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/1/article/262. (April, 2004.)
  • This article contains data on the labiodental flap from 75 languages, including 38 audio recordings (MP3 format) and one video recording (QuickTime MOV format) from the Mono language. The recordings are in section 5.1.6 of the paper.
• Tisserant, R. P. Charles. 1931. Dictionnaire banda-français (Travaux et Mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie 14). Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.

The Mono language

Kenneth Olson conducts research on the Mono language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mono is a Banda language, part of the larger Ubangian language group. The ISO 639–3 code (aka "Ethnologue code") for Mono is [mnh].

Olson's book, The Phonology of Mono, describes the sound system of Mono. It can be ordered from the SIL International Academic Bookstore. To order, click here. A CD containing the audio recordings that accompany the book may be ordered by contacting the author directly.

Key publications on Mono

• Kamanda-Kola, Roger. 2003. Phonologie et morpho-syntaxe du mono: Langue oubanguienne du Congo R.D. (LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 60). Munich: LINCOM EUROPA.
  • This is a published version of his 1998 dissertation from the Université Libre de Bruxelles: Étude descriptive du mono: Langue oubanguienne du Congo (ex-Zaïre).
• Olson, Kenneth S. 1996. On the comparison and classification of Banda dialects. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 32(1). 267–283.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2004. Mono. (Illustrations of the IPA.) Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34(2). 233–238.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2005. The phonology of Mono (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics 140). Dallas: SIL & UTA.
  • This is a published version of his 2001 dissertation from the University of Chicago: The phonology and morphology of Mono.
• Olson, Kenneth S. & Brian E. Schrag. 2000. An overview of Mono phonology. In H. Ekkehard Wolff & Orin Gensler (eds.), Proceedings from the 2nd World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig 1997, 393–409. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.

Niger-Congo Classification

Kenneth Olson conducts research on the classification of the Niger-Congo language family. Niger-Congo contains an estimated 1,500 languages, i.e. about one-fifth of the world's languages. The name "Niger-Congo" is from the two major rivers in the region.

The Niger-Congo languages cover most of sub-Saharan Africa. The northern border of the family stretches along a line between Senegal in the west and Kenya in the east. In the extreme southern part of the continent, Niger-Congo languages are intermingled with languages from the Khoisan family. The large Bantu subgroup of Niger-Congo covers most of Africa south of the equator.

Key publications on Niger-Congo

• Bendor-Samuel, John & Rhonda L. Hartell (eds.). 1989. The Niger-Congo languages: A classification and description of Africa's largest language family. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
• Bennett, Patrick R. & Jan P. Sterk. 1977. South Central Niger-Congo: A reclassification. Studies in African Linguistics 8(3). 241–273.
• Greenberg, Joseph H. 1970 [1963]. The languages of Africa, 3rd edn. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2006. On Niger-Congo classification. In Howard I. Aronson, Donald L. Dyer, Victor A. Friedman, Daniela S. Hristova & Jerrold M. Sadock (eds.), The Bill question, 153–190. Bloomington, IN: Slavica.
  • Working paper version: Olson, Kenneth S. 2004. An evaluation of Niger-Congo classification. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2004–005. Dallas: SIL. Online. URL: http://www.sil.org/silewp/2004/silewp2004-005.pdf. (12 October, 2004.)
• Stewart, John M. 1976. Towards Volta-Congo reconstruction (inaugural lecture). Leiden: University Press.
• Stewart, John M. 2002. The potential of Proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu as a pilot Proto-Niger-Congo, and the reconstructions updated. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 23. 197–224.
• Westermann, Diedrich. 1927. Die westlichen Sudansprachen und ihre Beziehungen zum Bantu. Berlin: de Gruyter.
• Williamson, Kay & Roger Blench. 2000. Niger-Congo. In Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse (eds.), African languages: An introduction, 11–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.