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A Grammar of Nzadi B865 A Bantu language of
Democratic Republic of Congo 1st Edition Thera Marie
Crane Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Thera Marie Crane, Larry M. Hyman, Simon Nsielanga Tukumu S.J.
ISBN(s): 9780520098862, 0520098862
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 15.59 MB
Year: 2011
Language: english
A GRAMMAR OF NZADI [B.865]

A Bantu Language of
the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Thera M. Crane,
Larry M. Hyman &
Simon Nsielanga Tukumu

Department of Linguistics
University of California, Berkeley

with appendices by Clara Cohen and Simon Nsielanga Tukumu

and with the participation of the 2008-2009

Nzadi Field Methods Course and Study Group:

Christina C. Agoff, Ian Coffman, Chad N. Hegelmeyer,

John G. Keesling, Jose Maria Lahoz, Dillon L. Mee, Getty D. Ritter,
Massoud Toofan, Lue Yee Tsang, Salgu R. Wissmath

University of California Publications in Linguistics

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN LINGUISTICS
Editorial Board: Judith Aissen, Andrew Garrett, Larry M. Hyman, Marianne Mithun,
Pamela Munro, Maria Polinsky

Volume 147

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© 2011 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011937756

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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vi A Grammar of Nzadi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Goals of this study 1
1.2 The Nzadi language 2
1.3 Structure of the grammar 4
1.4 Limitations of the study 6
1.5 Acknowledgements 7
1.6 Conventions and abbreviations 9
2 The Sound System 11
2.1 Word and stem structure 11
2.2 Syllable structure 14
2.3 The vowel system 16
2.4 The consonant system 21
2.5 Phonological rules 30
3 Tone 37
3.1 Basic tonal contrasts 37
3.2 General tone rules 41
3.3 Morphological tone rules 45
3.4 Intonation 55
4 The Noun 57
4.1 Noun forms 57
4.2 Singular/plural prefix pairings 60
4.3 Invariant nouns 67
4.4 Derived nouns 71
4.5 Noun compounds 73
5 The Noun Phrase 75
5.1 General 75
5.2 Pronouns 76
5.3 Genitive constructions 77
5.4 Adjectives 86
5.5 Determiners 89
5.6 Numerals and quantifiers 95
5.7 Participials 97
5.8 Word order 100
 Table of Contents vii

6 The Verb 105

6.1 Monosyllabic verb stems 105
6.2 Bisyllabic verb stems 107
6.3 Inflected verb stems 110
6.4 Reduplicated verb stems in the future tense 113
6.5 Lexicalized verb combinations 115
6.6 Transitivity 117
7 Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Negation 119
7.1 Overview of verbal inflection 119
7.2 Basic (“simplex”) TAM 120
7.3 Complex TAM expressions 133
7.4 Modals and modal-like auxiliaries 142
7.5 Copula forms (‘be’ / ‘have’) 144
8 Basic Sentence Structure 147
8.1 Introduction 147
8.2 Transitive and intransitive main clauses (S-Aux-V-(DO)) 147
8.3 Ditransitive main clauses (S-V-IO-DO and S-V-DO-Obl) 149
8.4 Adjuncts within the main clause 161
8.5 Negative bç 169
8.6 Comparatives 173
9 Coordination and Subordination 175
9.1 Introduction 175
9.2 NP coordination 176
9.3 Sentential coordination 176
9.4 Purposive subordination 180
9.5 Complement clauses 183
9.6 Temporal clauses 186
9.7 Conditional clauses 190
10 Information Structure 193
10.1 Introduction 193
10.2 Relative clauses 193
10.3 Interrogatives 215
10.4 Focus and topic 228
10.5 Other utterance types 239
viii A Grammar of Nzadi

APPENDIX A: An Overview of the Nzadi People and their History 243

by Simon Nsielanga Tukumu
A.1 Introduction 243
A.2 Settlement 244
A.3 Geographic area 245
A.4 Political organization 245
A.5 Social organization 246
A.6 Economic organization 247
A.7 Cultural beliefs 248
A.8 Educational system 248
A.9 Socio-cultural activities 252
A.10 The burial ceremony 253
A.11 Summary 253
APPENDIX B: Proto-Bantu – Nzadi Sound Corresponences 255
by Clara Cohen
B.1 Consonants 255
B.2 Vowels 263
B.3 Reduction patterns and relative chronology 267
B.4 Tones 268
TEXTS 271
Text 1 Nzadi history 272
Text 2 The Nzadi market 274
Text 3 oku@N: an Nzadi fish 278
ENGLISH-NZADI LEXICON 281
INDEX 299
 Table of Contents ix

ABBREVIATIONS

a. adjective nc. noun compound

adv. adverb NEG negative
AFF affirmative N homorganic nasal
AUX auxiliary NP noun phrase
c. conjunction num. numeral
C consonant O object
COND conditional (má) Obl oblique object/adjunct
d., DET determiner prep. preposition
DO direct object PERF perfect
FUT future PRES present
GL genitive linker /é/ PROG progressive
HAB habitual pron. pronoun
i. interrogative q. quantifier
IMP imperative RED reduplication (future)
INF infinitive S subject
IO indirect object SBJV subjunctive
interj. interjection TAM tense-aspect-mood
LOC locative (kó) V vowel
n. noun v. verb
N- nasal prefix vc. verb complex

Tone marks: (´): H(igh)

(`): L(ow)
(ˆ): HL falling
( &) : LH rising
( &`) : LHL rising-falling
( !´ ): Downstepped H
 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Goals of this study

1.2. The Nzadi language
1.3. Structure of the grammar
1.4. Limitations of the study
1.5. Acknowledgements
1.6. Conventions and abbreviations

1.1. Goals of this Study

This study presents a grammar, texts, and lexicon of Nzadi, a virtually unknown Bantu
language spoken along the Kasai River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During the
academic year 2008-2009 we were fortunate to be able to work together when the third
author, a native speaker of Nzadi, was a student at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
In Fall 2008, Simon Tukumu served as a language consultant for an undergraduate field
methods course, jointly conducted by the first two authors, and attended by nine Berkeley
undergraduate students and one visiting graduate student from Madrid. When the three
authors originally met in the Winter of 2008 to see if Simon could serve as the language
consultant for Linguistics 140, we were not only unaware of any previous work on Nzadi—or
in fact, of any previous mention of the language in the literature: For example, there was (and
as of June 2011 still is) no mention of Nzadi in the on-line Ethnologue
(http://www.ethnologue.com/). We later discovered that a Belgian scholar, Nico Burssens,
had collected word lists in the area, including Nzadi, which he had sent to the second author
for inclusion in the Comparative Bantu On-Line Dictionary (CBOLD) database in the mid
1990s. That was it, the complete record on the Nzadi language.
2 A Grammar of Nzadi

After the course ended, with five of the original field methods students, we decided to
continue our investigations as a Study Group during the Spring 2009 semester. Our goal was
to add to the previously recorded and analyzed materials which could then be assembled into
a grammar of this heretofore unstudied Bantu language. The current grammar is based on
information obtained from elicitations as well as three narratives (Texts 1-3) spoken by
Simon Tukumu, with all sessions being recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by the members
of the project.
While our goal was to cover as much ground as possible the resulting grammar is
obviously limited by the logistics (cf. §1.4). As will be seen, the chapters which present the
phonology and morphology are more comprehensive than those dealing with syntactic,
semantic and pragmatic issues. Our goal has been to cover the basics in hopes that the work
will be useful to Bantu scholars, general linguists, and to the speakers of Nzadi themselves.
Needless to say, this is a first grammar, which we hope will be followed up by other studies.

1.2. The Nzadi Language

As mentioned, Nzadi is a small Bantu language spoken by fishing communities from

Kwamuntu to Ilebo along the North side of the Kasai River in Bandundu Province
(Democratic Republic of the Congo). Their villages are interspersed with others consisting of
speakers of different languages, particularly Dzing, Mbuun, and Lwal. Simon Tukumu was
born in Bundu, shown on the following map, where he lived until the age of 13.

©2010 Google - Map ©2010 AfriGIS (Pty) Ltd, Europa Technologies, Tele Atlas (+ our
additonal marking of Bundu)
 Introduction 3

He did his primary school in Bundu and Kikwit, secondary school in Bandundu, and
subsequent studies in Bandundu and Kinshasa. He also speaks Dzing, Kikongo (Kituba) and
Lingala. It is not known how many Nzadi speakers there are, but based on the number and
size of the known Nzadi villages, we estimate several thousand.
Since Nzadi was virtually unknown until our study, it was not indexed within Malcolm
Guthrie’s Bantu zones A-S. It is clear, however, that Nzadi belongs with other languages in
Guthrie’s B.80 group, shown on the following map (courtesy of Jouni Maho):

Appropriately, Jouni Maho (goto.glocalnet.net/mahopapers/nuglonline.pdf) has since

designated it as B.865. Simon Tukumu considers it most closely related to Lwal (also
unstudied), then perhaps to Dzing. It is not clear and we consider it unlikely that the B.80
languages constitute a genetic subgroup. Although there has been work on some of the B.80
languages, all are in need of further study. These languages seem to have been long in contact
with each other and other Bantu languages from which they have either heavily borrowed or
otherwise undergone areal changes. As will be seen in the following chapters, Nzadi has
undergone much more reduction than some of the surrounding languages. It has significantly
shortened words, many of which are now monosyllabic (Chapter 2), and it has lost almost all
noun class agreement (Chapter 5) and derivational morphology, e.g. verb extensions (Chapter
6). As a result of the considerable phonetic erosion and morphological attrition, Nzadi has
developed a largely isolating syntax, with many short words and particles. Such processes are
not unknown in the Northwest Bantu area and borderland: Certain zone A Bantu languages,
as well as Grassfields Bantu and other Bantoid languages in Cameroon have also lost
syllables and morphemes. However, these languages are not daughters of the Proto-Bantu
reconstructed by A. E. Meeussen and others, rather reconstruct to different proto languages.
While the historical changes that have taken place in Nzadi definitely give it a “non-Bantu”
feel, it is clear that Nzadi derives from a quite canonical Bantu type. Nzadi “feels” like a
4 A Grammar of Nzadi

simplified Bantu language rather than a Bantu language which has developed West African
Benue-Congo characteristics (e.g. Nzadi does not have the “serial verb constructions” attested
in Cameroon). In the relevant chapters we indicate the historical relations between specific
Nzadi lexical and grammatical morphemes and Proto-Bantu. The chapters are followed by
two appendices. The first, researched and written by Simon Tukumu, gives an overview of
Nzadi history and culture. In the second, Clara Cohen presents an analysis of the
correspondences between Proto-Bantu and Nzadi consonants, vowels, and tones.

1.3. Structure of the Grammar

The current study is organized into ten chapters, two appendices, three texts, and an English-
Nzadi lexicon. The present chapter introduces the study and how it was done, ending with a
discussion of the conventions followed and a list of abbreviations. Below is a brief summary
of each of the nine following chapters, focusing particularly on what is of interest in each
from a Bantu or general linguistic perspective.
Chapter 2 (“The Sound System”) presents the word and syllable structure of Nzadi
followed by the vowel and consonant systems. It will be noted that words are considerably
shorter than in canonical Bantu languages, and that they often end in a coda consonant as the
result of the loss of the following vowel. The consonant and vowel systems are not
particularly complex, although an interesting feature is that vowel length is contrastive in both
open and closed syllables.
Chapter 3 (“Tone”) presents the tone system. Nzadi contrasts H (high) and L (low tone),
as well as downsteps. It has a great tolerance for contour tones: HL, LH and LHL may all
occur on a short or long vowel. A number of general tone rules are discussed (tone spreading,
tone absorption, downstep creation), followed by morphologically conditioned tone. Of
particular interest are the tonal alternations that take place in the genitive construction.
Chapter 4 (“The Noun”) shows that Nzadi nouns may be prefixless or may have a vowel
or nasal prefix, reflecting earlier Proto-Bantu noun class prefixes. Although prefixed nouns
usually change their prefix to form a plural, some are invariant, as are prefixless nouns, to
which the proclitic ba may be added to mark plurality. Derived nominals are rather restricted,
although compounding is quite common (and is non-distinct from genitive ‘noun of noun’).
Chapter 5 (“The Noun Phrase”) begins with pronouns, which take the same shape,
whether subject, object, oblique, independent, or possessive. This is followed by a discussion
of the genitive construction, significant as it is the only place in the grammar that marks a
reduced form of the historical Proto-Bantu noun class agreement system. Adjectives and
determiners at most show agreement in number and human/non-human, although most
adjectives are invariant, as are some determiners. It is seen that invariant nouns can be
inherently singular or plural, some occurring with both singular and plural modifiers.
Numerals and most quantifiers do not show number or human/non-human agreement. A
particularly interesting modifier is the participial productively formed with Nga- plus a verb
stem. The chapter ends by presenting the word order properties of noun phrases.
 Introduction 5

Chapter 6 (“The Verb”) presents the canonical shapes of verb stems, which can be either
monosyllabic or bisyllabic. In most cases the latter can be shown to have a frozen causative,
reversive or other extension. The problem here is determining which bisyllabic stems are
native vs. borrowed from neighboring languages which have undergone less reduction.
Inflected verb stems show relics of -i and -e suffixes in the past tense and subjunctive. The
stem undergoes partial prefixal reduplication in the affirmative of the future tense. A striking
fact is that lexicalized verb + noun combinations are often found where one would expect a
simplex root from Proto-Bantu, e.g. PB *-dIm- ‘to cultivate’ vs. Nzadi o-ker kisa@l, lit ‘to do
farming’, PB *-bU@mb- ‘to mould’ vs. Nzadi o-ker mfye& adzíN (lit. to make Dzing pottery).
Chapter 7 (“Tense, Aspect, Mood and Negation”) presents the inflectional properties of
the Nzadi verb. Unlike many other Bantu languages, Nzadi does not distinguish degrees of
past (or future) tense. A number of distinctions are expressed with additional auxiliaries,
many of which are verbs. While the various main clause verb inflections mark negation with
proclitics such as ka and sa, in subjunctive and relative clauses negation requires the use of
the affirmative form of the verb o-tûn ‘to refuse’ or o-saN ‘to refrain from’. (All negatives
require a second marker bç to occur later in the clause.) The chapter ends with a discussion of
the several different copular forms in the language.
Chapter 8 (“Basic Sentence Structure”) describes the different structures of main clauses.
Verbs can be intransitive, transitive or ditransitive in Nzadi, the last taking two objects in
sequence. In addition, there are various oblique forms: As an alternative to the double object
construction, the locative proclitic kó can be used to mark ‘to (someone)’. Similarly, the noun
sâm ‘reason’ can mark a benefactive ‘for (someone)’. Adjuncts and adverbials are shown to
have relatively free placement within their clause. The chapter ends with a discussion of the
obligatory negative marker bç, appearing post-verbally in the clause, in addition to the
proclitic negative marking described in Chapter 7.
Chapter 9 (“Coordination and Subordination”) considers the coordination of different
kinds of constituents (noun phrase, verb phrase, full clause), all marked by the same
conjunction yE, then turns to purposive subordination (‘in order that, in order to’),
complement clauses (‘I saw that...’), temporal clauses (‘when’, ‘before’, ‘after’), and
condition (‘if’) clauses, including counterfactuals.
Chapter 10 (“Information Structure”) pulls together different strategies used to
foreground and background elements in the sentence. Non-subject relative clauses are
particularly significant and interesting in Nzadi in requiring overt subject marking after the
verb. This can take the form of ‘the book that read the child’ or ‘the book that the child read
he’, the latter with what appears to be a pronominal copy. Yes-no and WH-questions are
shown to optionally take the post-verbal subject structure, and similarly for clefts. Discussion
of focus and topic marking is followed by a brief consideration of a few addition utterance
types, including greetings and epithets.
The ten chapters are followed by two appendices. In the first, co-author Simon Nsielanga
Tukumu provides an overview of the history and culture of the Nzadi people. The second
appendix is by Clara Cohen, who systematically presents the Proto-Bantu - Nzadi consonant-,
6 A Grammar of Nzadi

vowel- and tone correspondences. The latter are seen to be particularly conservative, as when
Proto-Bantu *m U$-jánà (> m U$-ánà) becomes mwa&àn ‘child’ with a LHL complex contour.
Three narratives then follow which were recorded with Simon Tukumu. Text 1 discusses
Nzadi history, particularly how the Nzadi people got to be where they are. Text 2 describes
the Nzadi market. Text 3 introduces okúN, an Nzadi fish which is too delicious to sell. A
recipe for cooking it is offered.
The texts are followed by an English-Nzadi lexicon of over 1,000 entries. The only
specialized part of the lexicon consists of the names of 26 fish species, collected with Jacob
Lowenstein. Although not a huge list, we hope it will be useful to Bantuists, ichthyologists,
and specialists of the Kasai River basin.

1.4. Limitations of the Study

As indicated in §1.1, it is our sincere hope that this Nzadi grammar will be of use to scholars
of different sorts, and ultimately to the Nzadi community as well (although this might better
have necessitated a version of the grammar in French). In §1.1 we hinted at limitations of the
study as well. Since we consider ourselves to be serious linguists and know that this kind of
study is not ideal, we thought it important to list what these limitations are, as well as the
steps we have taken to mitigate their effect on the study:

(i) We have been able to work with only one speaker. Ideally we would have liked
to work with several, particularly as we found variation in a number of places in
the grammar (e.g. in the tone of the past tense proclitic /ó/, realized variously as
H, HL and L). Because of this limitation we cannot tell if the inconsistencies we
observed derive from systematic differences between dialects or age groups, or
if they represent free or ideolectal variation. Where we have detected variation
we have noted this in the relevant section of the grammar.
(ii) Most of our information has come from elicitation rather than from direct
observation of speakers using the language. We have tried to overcome this in
part by collecting narratives, but this does not show how speakers exploit Nzadi
in interactional situations.
(iii) Related to this, we have done the study in Berkeley, not in Nzadi country, and
we have worked in translation rather than through the first language.
(iv) Lastly, there have been limitations of time and distance: Most of the materials
were collected during the 2008-9 academic year, when all of us involved had
many other obligations as well: Over the past two years the first author has also
been engaged in researching and writing drafts of her dissertation, while the
second author lives a life of extreme (and enjoyable) multi-tasking. During
much of the research period the third author was a graduate student writing a
masters thesis during the research period and returned to the DRC in September
2009. Since that time we been able to consult only over email.
 Introduction 7

Despite the above limitations, we are quite pleased with what we have been able to
accomplish and offer this grammar as a contribution to the documentation of a previously
unknown language for which our field methods class received considerable publicity (see
§1.5).

1.5. Acknowledgements

In this section we would like to thank the many people to whom we are grateful for their
contributions and support of this project.
First, as part of the field methods course and study group which followed it, individual
undergraduate students provided first drafts on subjects to be covered in individual chapters.
Had they not all graduated, perhaps we could have continued working and produced an even
better product! We thus would like to thank the following for their contribution to individual
chapters and for their dedication to the project:

Chapter 2: José-Maria Lahoz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Ian

Coffman
Chapter 3: Getty Ritter
Chapter 4: Chad Hegelmeyer and Massoud Toofan
Chapter 7: Christina Agoff
Chapter 8: John Keesling and Dillon Mee
Chapter 9: Salgu Wissmath
Chapter 10: Lue Yee Tsang
Texts: Christina Agoff

We are grateful to the above students also for their contributions to other chapters as well and
to the lexicon, since we all collected new lexical items throughout the investigation.
Still concerning the lexicon, we wish to thank Jacob (“Jake”) Lowenstein of the
Department of Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, for
spending time with us to elicit names of fish species, as the Nzadi are fishermen by trade.
Concerning Appendix B, we were delighted when Clara Cohen approached the second
author to inquire whether he had a good topic for a term paper in her graduate course in
historical linguistics. The result is the appended study of Proto-Bantu - Nzadi sound
correspondences.
Outside Berkeley, we have been grateful for correspondences with several Bantuists who
have commented on our project or have offered help in various ways. These include Koen
Bostoen and Jacky Maniacky (Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium),
Salikiko Mufwene (University of Chicago), Timothée Mukash Kalel (Université de
Kinshasa), Joseph Koni-Muluwa (Université Libre de Bruxelles), and Léon Pierre Mundeke
(Centre Linguistique Théorique et Appliquée (CELTA)). For his advice we thank Jean-Marie
Hombert (Laboratoire Dynamique du Language, CNRS/Université de Lyon) and
8 A Grammar of Nzadi

acknowledge, with thanks, our joint France-Berkeley Fund travel grant which allowed for
sustained consultations between Berkeley and Lyon.
In addition to those who physically participated in the project, we are grateful to a
number of people and offices on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. First,
we are extremely grateful to the Committee on Research for approving a Humanities
Graduate Research Assistantship to the first author so that she could participate as a full
partner throughout the project. In both the field methods course and study group which
followed, Thera Crane had a number of responsibilities in the documentation process, e.g.
recording, transcription, translation, and archiving of texts and elicitation sessions, making
presentations to the group and to others, writing up several of the chapters) as well as in her
own elicitations, analysis and writing of the final work. Without this support it would have
been extremely difficult to bring this project to fruition.
We are also grateful to several others on campus for the enthusiasm shown to us and our
project (which combined research and teaching). First, within the Department of Linguistics,
Sharon Inkelas, the chair, and the staff, Paula Floro, Belen Flores, Natalie Babler and Ron
Sprouse, helped us in numerous ways, both with respect to the students, the language
consultant, space, computation, and other matters. Martha Saveedra, Associate Director of the
Center for African Studies, was so enthusiastic that she brought the Nzadi project to the
attention of Kathleen Maclay, Senior Public Information Representative (UC Berkeley Media
Relations), who subsequently did a press release. This in turn led to articles which appeared
in the Daily Californian (thanks to Deepti Arora) the San Francisco Chronicle (thanks to
writer Pat Yollin and photographer Mike Kepka), and Science (thanks to Greg Miller), and
Bridge (a publication of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley). The respective links to
these stories (and videos) are the following:

http://www.dailycal.org/article/102438/uc_berkeley_first_to_offer_remote_african_language
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/06/BA7I133KE1.DTL
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol322/issue5901/newsmakers.dtl
http://www.scu.edu/jst/whatwedo/publications/upload/bridge_spring09-2.pdf

We also are particularly grateful to Simon Tukumu’s sponsors at the Jesuit School of
Theology at Berkeley who allowed him to take time from his studies, encouraging him and us
at all stages: Father Tony Sholander, Rector, and Father Bill O’Neill, Professor of Social
Ethics. We hope that they will also be happy with the results of this study.
We also would like to thank Dr. Kemmonye (“Kems”) Monaka, a visiting scholar from
Botswana in the Department of Linguistics during 2007-8, who originally put the three of us
in contact, thereby providing the crucial beginning point for this project.
In short, this project and the resulting grammar represent a team effort which would not
have been possible without the tireless efforts of our students and others who contributed
along the way. To all of them our sincerest thanks and hope that they will find value in what
we have been modestly able to put together as a tribute also to their efforts. We know that
 Introduction 9

each of the students would personally like to join the first two authors in thanking Simon
Tukumu for sharing his knowledge of the Nzadi language with us, for his commitment to the
project, and for his friendship.

1.6. Conventions and Abbreviations

In this work we have tried to present the data in as clear fashion as possible so that it will
have greatest access. Although we did not faithfully follow the Leipzig conventions for
glossing linguistic data, in several chapters we provide word by word glosses to help the
reader unravel the longer or more complex examples. In our glossing we have strayed a bit
from certain practices in two ways: First, in many places we use English glosses like ‘I’ vs.
‘me’ instead of morphosyntactic features, e.g. ‘1sg.’ (first person singular). Similarly, we
write ‘of’ instead of ‘genitive’ or ‘GL’ for ‘genitive linker’. Second, we sometimes keep the
literal meaning of the form instead of the meaning found in the translation of the full form.
For example, the form sâm is always glossed with its nominal meaning ‘reason’, even if its
meaning or function in the phrase or utterance is ‘for (someone)’ or ‘because of (someone,
something)’. The WH question phrase sám !é N@g é is translated ‘why?’ although the individual
glosses will be ‘reason of what’. Where needed, we do follow the Leipzig convention in using
a dot (.) to indicate that a form has two meanings in one. The following sentence exemplifies
several of the conventions we follow:

bç ó mpé m"‡` çNkàán

they PAST me.give me book
‘they gave me a book’

First, we gloss bç as ‘they’, not as ‘3pl. [+human]’. Second, grammatical glosses are put in
small caps, e.g. PAST (tense). Third, ‘me.give’ indicates that mpé has both the 1sg. object
agreement prefix N- as well as the verb stem. Note that we do not gloss the past tense change
of vowel of o-pá ‘to give’ ! pé, although we do gloss the reduplication of the future
affirmative form, e.g. pîpé ‘fut.RED’ (where the reduplicant pî precedes the verb stem pé).
Readers should have little problem following these and other glossing conventions.
Concerning the orthography, the conventions followed are discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.
It is perhaps worth repeating the tone marking practices here: A H tone is marked by an acute
(´) accent. Tone is left unmarked on syllables which are L, e.g. o-pá ‘to give’ is pronounced
L-H. However, L pitch is marked when it occurs in combination with H in a contour tone. If
the contour is on a single vowel, HL falling tone is marked by a circumflex (ˆ), and LH rising
tone by a hatchek ( &), e.g. lç^N ‘teacher’, nç& ‘it’. If the contour occurs over a long vowel, both
an acute and a grave accent are used: swíì ‘red’, màá ‘mother’. The rising-falling contour
LHL is written three ways, depending on syllable structure: mwa&àn ‘child’ (long vowel),
dzu&m$ ‘ten’ (short vowel + nasal consonant), lwo&` ‘hand, arm’ (short vowel in open syllable).
 CHAPTER 2: THE SOUND SYSTEM

2.1. Word and stem structure

2.2. Syllable structure
2.3. The vowel system
2.4. The consonant system
2.5. Phonological rules

2.1. Word and Stem Structure

From a Bantu perspective, it is striking how short words are: Out of 1,000 lexical entries, 859
(or 85.9%) contain a monosyllabic stem, while 141 (or 14.1%) have a bisyllabic stem. Words
from all parts of speech can consist of a free-standing stem of one or two syllables (verbs are
cited in their imperative form):

[2.1] nouns: nwí ‘bee’ mE@mE ‘deaf and dumb person’

bwç ‘mushroom’ tsébo ‘sneezing’
mE$E@ ‘oil, fat’ fufú ‘fufu (cassava meal)’
duu ‘sky’ tufîn ‘pus’
wén ‘sun’ sEmE^k ‘sibling-in-law’
bvuur ‘load’ kakál ‘aunt (sister of father)’
12 A Grammar of Nzadi

verbs: bvâ ‘fall!’ bán@tsa ‘think!’

dzâ ‘eat!’ sa&rsa ‘help!’
láà ‘cook!’ sç&nka ‘write!’
wE&E$ ‘take!’ bálul ‘turn around!’
syâN ‘laugh!’ táfun ‘chew!’
ma&t` ‘stand!’ sákan ‘play!’
other: dzo ‘quiet’ nç&wE ‘today’
pE ‘here’ sE@sE^p ‘now’
bç& ‘they, them’ bulE^ ‘blue’
pyoo ‘black’ tsE@tsE@ ‘very quiet’
dzûm ‘ten’ pEtpE@t ‘soft, softness’
bviir ‘strong, hard’ gangán ‘among’

As seen in the last four examples to the right, many prefixless bisyllabic words are borrowed
or involve reduplication; cf. sàbât ‘shoe’, màáNg u&l ‘mango’, pçtpç^t ‘mud’, pEpE^ ‘papaya’,
bukbuk ‘fish (sp.)’, kamyç^ ‘car’ (French camion ‘truck’). In the case of bisyllabic verb stems,
most are analyzeable as a root + suffix, e.g. tâ N ‘count, read!’, táNsa ‘teach!’ (=cause to count,
read), kâN ‘close!’, ka&Ngul ‘open!’ (= unclose) (see §4.6.2).
While a stem consists of a root and possible suffix, a word may either be prefixless, as in
[2.1], or may have a prefix consisting of a vowel or homorganic nasal (cf. below for
orthographic conventions concerning hyphens):

[2.2] nouns: okal ‘place’ osisá ‘vein, muscle’

ekal ‘places’ epéké ‘liver’
ikç@çr@ ‘frog’ imE@mE ‘sheep’
ikwç ‘banana’ izibà ‘lake’
adzá ‘water’ asíké ‘horns’
mbvá ‘dog’ mpçndç@ ‘millet’
ndzçç ‘elephant’ ndikîl ‘poison’
verbs: o-bva ‘to fall’ o-bán@tsa ‘to think’
o-dzá ‘to eat’ o-sarsa ‘to help’
o-láà ‘to cook’ o-sçnka ‘to write’
o-wEE ‘to take’ o-balul ‘to turn around’
o-syâN ‘to laugh’ o-tafun ‘to chew’
o-mat ‘to stand’ o-sakan ‘to play’
 The Sound System 13

other: obé ‘bad’ o-kpú!kpê ‘short’

ebim ‘already’ ikíke&r ‘small, thin’
ípe ‘two’ ísyE@mE ‘six’
atá ‘even’ íN@ke&n ‘other, another’
mpa ‘new’ mpE@mbE@ ‘white’
Nge ‘what, which’ ntámá ‘a long time ago’

Again, some of the words with bisyllabic stems are reduplications or borrowings (cf.
avokâ ‘avocado’.) As seen in the examples, the tone of the prefix is low on nouns and verbs
(which are cited with the infinitive prefix o-). The prefix of certain numerals, quantifiers and
a few other forms may be high toned: ç@mçtúk ‘one’, ç@mç ‘certain’, m@p i ‘also, and’, N@gizyâ
‘-self’. The fact that the prefix of adjectives is low suggests that adjectives are nouns: okúùr
‘old’, onân ‘big’, mpip ‘dark’, ndzya ‘deep’ (cf. §5.4).
Within the lexicon there are five entries with apparent trisyllabic stems and one stem
with four syllables: mbwEtE@tE ‘star’, osákátá ‘a Sakata person’, simísi ‘shirt’ (French
chemise), o-tambika ‘to sacrifice’, o-zabakan ‘to know each other’, o-baluluka ‘to turn
(around), intr.’. Among other polysyllabic entries are compounds involving two separate
stems, e.g. ndzô nwí ‘beehive’ (ndzó ‘house’ + nwí ‘bee’), mwa& lwo&` ‘finger’ (mwa&àn ‘child’,
lwo&` ‘hand, arm’). While it is not always possible to identify the two parts of a compound,
certain consonant sequences are found only across stem boundaries, e.g. oful-mun ‘breath’,
where neither oful nor mun can be independently identified. If the second stem has a prefix,
then there is no question that a compound or phrase is involved, e.g. òté N@kò ‘pestle’ (òté
‘stick, tree’, Nkó ‘mortar’), Ngal-mbíí ‘cat’ (where neither Ngal nor mbíí have been
independently identified). Some such “compounds” are actually genitive constructions:
‘house of bee’, ‘stick of mortar’ (cf. §5.3).
In Nzadi all lexical stems begin with a consonant: Words which begin with a vowel (or
syllabic nasal) consist therefore of a prefix + stem. In the case of nouns, these prefixes may
differ in singular vs. plural forms, e.g. okal ‘place’ (pl. ekal), okáàr ‘woman’ (pl. akáàr), ebin
‘door’ (pl. mbin). Besides prefixes, other grammatical formatives (“morphemes”) can consist
solely of a vowel, e.g. ó ‘past tense marker’, é ‘genitive linker’, EE ‘yes’.
We have seen that a stem can consist solely of a root or of a root + suffix. Another
difference between root and stem occurs in a small number of nouns whose stem consists of a
frozen, non-productive consonantal prefix + vowel-initial root,, e.g. mwa&àn ‘child’ (pl.
ba&àn), wa&àr ‘canoe’, (pl. ma&àr), dz"‡` ‘eye’ (pl. m"‡ì). While these words consist of a frozen
prefix + root, it is less obvious how to analyze Kikongo borrowings such as the following:
musumbwâ ‘fish (sp.)’ (pl. misumbwâ), likE@mba ‘plantain’ (pl. makE@mba), kisâl ‘work’
(plural, bisâl). The change from singular to plural suggests that the initial CV syllables are
prefixes, although they are not native to Nzadi. In other cases (and often alternatively), the
plural is formed by adding ba- rather than by changing the initial CV, e.g. likEmb E
‘handpiano’ (pl. ba-likEmbe), lulE^n ‘boasting’ (pl. ba-lulE^n). Both such borrowings and
14 A Grammar of Nzadi

compounds are sometimes at odds with the otherwise general word, stem, and syllable
structure of the language.
In this grammar the following orthographic conventions are followed concerning
hyphens: If the following stem is “bound” in the sense that it cannot occur without the prefix,
the two are written together. If the following stem is “free”, i.e. if it constitutes a word that
could stand on its own, the prefix is separated by a hyphen. Thus:

(i) In nouns the default plural marker ba- will be separated from what follows,
since the singular can exist on its own, e.g. siN ‘net’ (pl. ba-siN), ekç@ ‘cloud’ (pl.
ba-ekç@).
(ii) In verbs, the infinitive prefix o- is separated from the stem, as in [2.2]. While
this might seem to follow from the fact that the bare verb stem can occur
independently as an imperative, as in [2.1], the hyphen is used also to show that
o- is more separate from verb stems than, say, the noun prefix o-. This is seen,
first, by the fact that o- harmonizes to [ç] before a noun stem with /ç/, but not
before a similar verb stem. The hyphen captures this fact: çtsç@ ‘head’ vs. o-tsç@
‘to pound’. Second, the infinitive o- can be followed by the verb stem or by
optional pronoun object agreement (§8.3.7), e.g. first person singular N-: o-pá
m"‡` ~ o-mpá m"‡` ‘to give me’.

The same hyphen notation may be employed to indicate suspected compound boundaries,
whether the individual parts are identifiable or not, e.g. oful-mun or ofulmun ‘breath’, oNgba-
tyEm or o NgbatyEm ‘lizard’.

2.2. Syllable Structure

As seen in §2.1, stems obligatorily begin with a consonant, while grammatical markers such
as noun and verb prefixes may consist of a single V- or homorganic nasal N-. All vowels
except /u/ may occur as a prefix: ibaa ‘man’, ebin ‘door’, EkE@ ‘leaf’, okáàr ‘woman’, çtçk
‘pipe’, adzá ‘water’, mbum ‘fruit’, ndç^b ‘fishhook’. VNC sequences also occur: iNkç&m ‘fist’,
eNkûr ‘owl’, ontsûN ‘devil’, çmpçN ‘fish (sp.)’. When not preceded by a vowel, a nasal prefix
is syllabic, e.g. when occurring initially: m.bum ‘fruit’, n.d ç^b ‘fishhook’. VNCV sequences
are syllabified between the vowel and the nasal: o.mbvul ‘umbrella’, i.Nkç&m ‘fist’, etc.
Concerning stems, syllables must be consonant-initial, possibly NC, and can have any of
the shapes CV, CVV, CVC or CVVC, where VV = a long vowel:
 The Sound System 15

[2.3] CV: nwí ‘bee’ bwç ‘mushroom’

osó ‘face’ Nka& ‘snail’
o-dzá ‘to eat’ o-kE ‘to go’
CVV: duu ‘sky, up’ mE$E@ ‘oil, fat’
itáá ‘sun’ ndzçç ‘elephant’
o-láà ‘to cook’ o-yEE ‘to sell’
CVC: nûr ‘body’ sç^k ‘axe’
abal ‘belly’ ntEn ‘snake’
o-tûm ‘to send’ o-ker ‘to do’
CVVC: muur ‘person’ máán ‘wine’
otáám ‘trap’ Nkáàm ‘goat’
o-byE@E$r ‘to drum’ o-báàn ‘to climb, rise’

As will be discussed in §2.4.2, not all consonants can be a final (coda) of the syllable,
plus there are restrictions on V+C combinations.
While most stems are monosyllabic, Nzadi also has bisyllabic stems, many of which are
borrowed, involve reduplication, or may be historical compounds. In all cases the second
syllable of bisyllabic stems must also be consonant initial. In the following CV schemas, (.)
stands for a syllable break:

[2.4] CV.CV: tsébo ‘sneezing’ pEpE^ ‘papaya’

isíké ‘horn’ iziba ‘lake’
nç&wE ‘today’ okalí ‘yesterday’
CVC.CV: pambú ‘worm’ mámpa ‘bread’
mpçndç@ ‘millet’ oyánsi ‘a Yansi person’
o-sçnka ‘to write’ o-sarsa ‘to help’
CV.CVC: sabât ‘shoe’ sEmE^k ‘sibling-in-law’
ifakâm ‘stool’ Ngyovûl ‘question’
o-balul ‘to turn’ o-kasul ‘to divide’
CVC.CVC: dç&Ndç&N ‘okra’ taltál ‘mirror’
tuktuk ‘motorcycle’ ntsumbûl ‘root’
o-kaNgul ‘to open’ o-bán@tsa ‘to think’

While all of the above are found in Nzadi, syllabic shapes are not equally distributed
across the lexicon. In fact, there are significant differences between the shapes of nouns and
verbs:
16 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.5] CV CVV CVC CVVC CVCV CVCCV CVCVC CVCCVC CVVCVC totals:
nouns: 78 61 232 38 24 10 11 8 3
465
(16.8) (13.1) (49.9) (8.2) (5.2) (2.2) (2.4) (1.7) (.6)
verbs: 48 15 130 14 Ø 15 24 11 Ø
257
(18.7) (5.8) (50.6) (5.4) (0) (5.8) (9.3) (4.3) (0)
totals: 126 76 362 52 24 25 35 19 3
722
(17.5) (10.6) (50.1) (7.2) (3.3) (3.5) (4.8) (2.6) (.4)
616 (85.3) 106 (14.7)

In [2.5], the first line of each cell refers to the number found with each shape among 465
noun stems and 257 verb stems. The second line in parentheses refers to the percentage of
noun- vs. verb stems which have that shape. The following can be noted:

(i) While all monosyllabic shapes are well attested in both nouns and verbs, nouns
have a higher percentage of CVV stems than verbs.
(ii) The bisyllabic shape CVCV is totally lacking in verbs.
(iii) All other bisyllabic stem shapes are more robustly represented in verbs than in
nouns whose bisyllabic noun stems are often reduplications (e.g. 6 out of the 8
CVCCVC noun stems), borrowed (e.g. at least 5 of the 10 CVCCV noun stems),
or perhaps frozen compounds. Note that three bisyllabic stems, all nouns, have a
long vowel in their first syllable: ntsíìri ‘canerat’, ipááfu&l ‘butterfly’, màáNgu&l
‘mango’. The only entry which has a long vowel in its second syllable is tukíìr
‘fish (sp.)’, perhaps a borrowing. It can thus be said that vowel length is
associated with monosyllabicity in Nzadi. Finally, two exceptional borrowed
nouns also end with a consonant sequence: matç@nd ‘thanks’, sukamûnt ‘gorilla’,
both likely to be morphologically complex in the donor language.

2.3. The Vowel System

Nzadi distinguishes seven contrasting vowels, which can occur short or long:

[2.6] front central back front central back

high i u ii uu
high-mid e o ee oo
low-mid E ç EE çç
low a aa

/i, e, E/ are both front and unrounded, /u, o, ç/ are back and rounded, and /a/ is central and
unrounded. Examples involving open monosyllabic stems are seen in [2.7].
 The Sound System 17

[2.7] /i, ii/ dz"‡` ‘eye’ ndzii ‘cowry, money’

o-sî ‘leave behind’ o-sii ‘frighten’
o-tsî ‘to accept’ o-tsíì ‘to float’
/e, ee/ obé ‘bad’ mbéè ‘friend’
Nge ‘which’ Ngèé ‘pity’
ntswé ‘fish’ ntswèé ‘facial hairs’
/E, EE/ ndyE@ ‘injury’ ondyE@E@ ‘white man’
o-kE ‘to go’ EkE@E@ ‘leaf’
pE ‘here’ o-pEE ‘to look for’
/u, uu/ otû ‘night’ tuu ‘termite’
kifu ‘error’ ifuu ‘hole’
/o, oo/ mpfyô ‘cold’ pyoo ‘black’
ibvyo&` ‘breast’ ogyòó ‘hiccup’
/ç, çç/ çdzç ‘good’ ndzçç ‘elephant’
ekç@ ‘cloud’ ekçç ‘bee’
çtç@ ‘bow & arrow’ o-tç@ç$ ‘to gather, pick’
/a, aa/ ibá ‘palmtree’ ebáá ‘groundnut paste’
eká ‘fur’ Nkáá ‘crab’
o-lya ‘to pass’ o-lyaa ‘to cry’

An instrumental study by José María Lahoz shows the vowel space of Nzadi speaker
Simon Tukumu to be as in [2.8]. In general, long vowels show more extreme formant values,
resulting in a triangle slightly bigger than that of short vowels. Thus, /ee/ presents a higher F2
than /e/, such that the long vowel is realized more front than the short one. In addition, the
long back vowels are all realized further back than their short counterparts (p < .01 in all
cases, except for /uu/, where p < .05). The seven long and short vowels have the following
distributions in the vowel space.
18 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.8]

The table in [2.9] shows the approximate mean values of F1 and F2 for all these vowels.

[2.9] Nzadi Formant Frequencies

F1 F2 F1 F2
a 795 1425 aa 810 1440
SHORT VOWELS

LONG VOWELS

E 520 2070 EE 485 2080

e 370 2215 ee 390 2315
i 245 2395 ii 235 2370
ç 420 1035 çç 445 910
o 355 820 oo 380 740
u 260 805 uu 285 730
 The Sound System 19

While some of the stems seen above in [2.7] contrast only in length (and possibly tone),
it has been hard to find minimal pairs for some of the vowels. The reason for this can be seen
in the following table showing the number of open monosyllabic stems with short vs. long
vowels:

[2.10] i e E u o ç a totals:
CV: 21 15 25 3 16 15 58 153
CVV: 15 8 11 18 2 8 23 85
totals: 36 23 36 21 18 23 81 238

Out of a sample of 238 open monosyllabic stems, 153 or 64.3% are CV vs. 85 or 35.7%
which are CVV. In other words, lexical CV entries outnumber lexical CVV by nearly two to
one. Despite this, it is puzzling that are only 3 entries with short /u/, and only two with long
/oo/, both of which have an initial Cy consonant: pyoo ‘black’, ogyoo ‘hiccup’. Still, there can
be no question that vowel length is contrastive in open monosyllabic stems.
Vowel length is also contrastive in closed syllables, but, with one exception, only in
syllables which end in /m/, /n/ or /r/:

[2.11] -m : ntç^m ‘taste’ ntsç@ç$m ‘fork’

Nkám ‘hundred’ Nkáàm ‘goat’
itâm ‘cheek’ otáàm ‘trap’
-n : NkE@n ‘seed’ mikE@E@n ‘leprosy’
ekûn ‘firewood’ ekúún ‘hip’
ima&n ‘stone’ máán ‘wine’
-r : ikç@çr@ ‘frog’ iyç@r ‘place’
eNkûr ‘owl’ okúùr ‘old’
ekâr ‘incompetent’ okáàr ‘woman’

The one exception that has been noted is onda&àl ‘vegetable (sp.)’. As seen in [2.12], short
vowels are much more common than long vowels before -m and -n, with a more even
distribution of long and short vowels before -r:
20 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.12] -m -n -r nouns verbs totals

CVC: 65 54 23 100 42 142
CVVC: 9 21 21 37 14 51
CiiC: 0 0 3 2 1 4
CEEC: 0 1 2 2 1 3
CuuC: 0 4 6 6 3 10
CççC: 1 3 2 6 0 6
CaaC: 8 14 9 22 9 31
totals: 74 75 44 137 56 193

Also seen in [2.12] is that the vowel /aa/ accounts for 31 out of 54 or 57.4% of the CVVC
entries. (The vowels /ee/ and /oo/ do not occur in closed syllables—see next paragraph.)
Finally, the percentage of CVVC to CVC stems is roughly equivalent in nouns and verbs
(27.0% and 25.0%, respectively).
While all seven vowels contrast in open syllables (cf. [2.7]), there are significant
restrictions on vowel contrasts in closed syllables. Just as /CooC/ syllables do not exist in
Nzadi, short /o/ also does not occur in closed syllables at all:

[2.13] /CiC/ min ‘mouth’ mbin ‘calabash’

o-lil ‘to swim’ o-yîb ‘to steal’
okin ‘entire’ ebim ‘already, previously’
/CeC/ idzên ‘tooth’ oNgêr ‘thing’
o-ker ‘to do’ o-mên ‘to dance’
o-lek ‘surpass’ íNke&n ‘other, another’
/CEC/ ntEn ‘snake’ kyE^s ‘happiness, joy’
o-dE^f ‘to borrow’ o-bE^l ‘to suffer’
o-fE^t ‘should, must’ ntE^t ‘first’
/CuC/ ibúl ‘valley’ ekwut ‘ear’
o-fur ‘to pay’ o-sûm ‘to buy’
dzûm ‘ten’ ofûl ‘still’
/CoC/ (no examples)
/CçC/ lç^N ‘teacher’ ngçm ‘drum’
iyç@r ‘place’ mpçs ‘Saturday, week’
o-tç ‘to boil’ o-pwçp ‘to sift’
/CaC/ ima&n ‘stone’ Ngab ‘canoe’
osyâN ‘to laugh’ o-kât ‘to hold, catch’
onân ‘big’ dyâk ‘again’

As seen from the numbers in [2.14], /CuC/ is overrepresented:

 The Sound System 21

[2.14] /i/ /e/ /E/ /u/ /o/ /ç/ /a/ total

CVC: 49 32 30 116 0 54 95 376

It may therefore be the case that historical *CoC merged with *CuC. The story
concerning /CeC/ is not as clear. First, note that what we write as CeC is really pronounced
with a mid-high central vowel (IPA [´]), here transcribed with [ˆ]: ebep [ebˆp] ‘lip’, Nkêm
[Nkˆflm] ‘monkey’, oNgêr [çNgˆflr] ‘thing’. Since /o/ does not occur in closed syllables, which
may have merged with /u/, it is tempting to interpret CeC as the realization of /CiC/.
However, (near-) minimal pairs show that such an analysis is not possible:

[2.15] /i/ vs. /e/ mpip ‘dark’ mpep ‘cave’

o-dzik ‘to extirpate’ odzek ‘to tremble’
mpîk ‘slave’ ipek ‘shoulder’
elim ‘fish (sp.)’ elem ‘glue’
isín ‘squirrel’ esen ‘louse’
mpîk ‘slave’ ipek ‘shoulder’
/e/ vs. /E/ íNke&n ‘(an)other’ NkE^n ‘seed’
o-yêr ‘to drive away’ idzE@r ‘fish (sp.)’
elem ‘glue’ malE^m ‘slowness’
esen ‘louse’ ntEn ‘snake’

For further restrictions on VC rimes, see §2.4.

2.4. The Consonant System

Nzadi contrasts the following single consonants in stem-initial position, where parentheses
indicate rare or non-contrastive consonants which require discussion:

[2.16] labial alveolar palatal velar labiovelar

stops p b t d k (g) kp (gb)
affricates (pf) bv ts dz
fricatives f v s z
nasals m n
liquid l (r)
glides y w

As seen, Nzadi distinguishes five classes of stem-initial consonants: (unaspirated) stops,

affricates, fricatives, nasals and the oral sonorants /l/, /w/ and /y/. Although five places of
articulation are indicated, only the glide y (IPA [j]) is palatal, only stops can be velar, and
22 A Grammar of Nzadi

only stops and the glide /w/ can be labiovelar. What this means is that consonant contrasts are
weighted towards the labial and alveolar places of articulation.
The orthographic representation of consonants closely follows the IPA values except for
the palatal glide which is written y instead of j. Where two different consonants are indicated
under the place of articulation, the consonant on the left is voiceless, while the consonant on
the right is voiced, e.g. /p/ vs. /b/. As seen, voicing is contrasted on stops, affricates and
fricatives. The eight contrasting stops are illustrated in [2.17].

[2.17] /p/: epim ‘fish (sp.)’ /b/: ebim ‘already’

ípe ‘two’ obé ‘bad’
ipek ‘shoulder’ obek ‘size’
/t/: çtçk ‘pipe’ /d/: ndçk ‘sorcery’
tuu ‘termite’ duu ‘sky, up’
etúN ‘fly’ ndúN ‘pepper’
/k/: iNkç&m ‘fist’ /g/: Ngçm ‘drum’
Nkáb ‘paddle’ Ngab ‘canoe’
Nkûl ‘tortoise’ Ngûl ‘pig’
/kp/: okpé ‘sho rt’
!
/gb/: Ngbee ‘side’

Despite the contrasts in [2.17] there are two issues. First, of 18 entries with stem-initial
/g/, only one of them is not preceded by a nasal prefix: o-gçNsa ‘to expand’. Since historical
*k and *g merge as /k/ in Nzadi (see Appendix B), it is possible that current entries with /g/
are borrowings, perhaps also o-yuvul ‘to ask (someone)’ and Ngyovûl ‘question’. Even more
limited is /gb/ which has been found in only two entries, in both cases after a nasal: Ngbee
‘side’, çNgbatyEm ‘lizard’. While there are 10 entries with /kp/, e.g. ikpí ‘tick’, o-kpá ‘to die’,
okpé ‘short’, only one has a closed syllable stem, çNkpe&n ‘flea, jigger’, and all except the
reduplicated first syllable of okpú!kpê ‘short’ are followed by /i/, /e/ or /a/.
Affricates and fricatives also contrast in voicing:
 The Sound System 23

[2.18] [pf]: mpfùú ‘bird’ /bv/: ebvúù ‘fish (sp.)’

mpfûk ‘debt’ ibvuk ‘monkey (sp.)’
mpfye& ‘cooking pot’ mbvyê ‘wrapping of sth.’
/ts/: ntsaa ‘basket’ /dz/: ndzaa ‘hunger’
ntsé ‘down, bottom’ ndzéé ‘river’
o-tswâ ‘to bring’ o-dzwâ ‘to kill’
/f/: o-fup ‘to grill’ /v/: a-vúp ‘dew’
o-fin ‘to grasp’ viN ‘itch’
o-fûl ‘to still do sth.’ o-vîl ‘to disappear’
/s/: oswç&N ‘fish (sp.)’ /z/: izwçN ‘field, farm’
osya ‘beautiful’ o-zyâ ‘to know’
o-sâN ‘to refrain’ o-zâN ‘to lack’

The complication in this case is an asymmetry. While the fricatives /f, v, s, z/ regularly
become affricated to [pf, bv, ts, dz] after a nasal (see §2.5.2), /bv/, /ts/ and /dz/ can all occur in
the absence of a nasal prefix: o-bva ‘to fall’, o-tsá ‘to descend’, o-dzá ‘to eat’. On the other
hand, [pf] only occurs as the realization of /f/ after a nasal, e.g. ompfí ‘morning’, mpfer
‘flour’.
The following examples show contrasts between /m/ and /n/, /l/ and /d/, and /y/ and /w/:

[2.19] /m/: ç@mç& ‘(a) certain’ /n/: ç-nç@ ‘to drink’

ima&n ‘stone’ onân ‘big’
mE ‘but’ nE ‘who’
/l/: o-lç^N ‘to teach’ /d/: dç&Ndç&N ‘okra’
o-láà ‘to cook’ ndáá ‘story, voice’
elíN ‘shade’ diNdíN ‘middle of night’
/y/: o-yEE ‘to sell’ /w/: o-wEE ‘to choose, pick’
oyá ‘ripe’ o-wá ‘to finish (intr.)’
iyáàr ‘funnel’ o-wáàr ‘to dress, put on’

In addition to simple stem-initial consonants, consonants other than /kp/, /gb/, /y/ and /w/
can be followed by a /y/ or /w/. Examples:
24 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.20] /py/: pyoo ‘black’ /pw/: o-pwçn ‘to decay’

/by/: obyE^ ‘many’ /bw/: o-bwâl ‘to harvest’
/pfy/: mpfyô ‘cold’ /pfw/:
/bvy/: ibvyo&` ‘breast’ /bvw/: mbwâ ‘path’
/fy/: /fw/: o-fwanan ‘to resemble’
/vy/: o-vyâ ‘to call’ /vw/:
/my/: myáá ‘there’ /mw/: mwa&àn ‘child’
/ty/: o-tyE^n ‘to say, tell’ /tw/: etwâ ‘bag’
/dy/: ndyE@ ‘injury’ /dw/: ndwE ‘dream’
/tsy/: o-tsyak ‘to pour’ /tsw/: otswâ ‘to bring’
/dzy/: ndzyE&m ‘bat’ /dzw/: o-dzwâ ‘to kill’
/sy/: osya ‘beautiful’ /sw/: oswâ ‘tomorrow’
/zy/: o-zyâ ‘to know’ /zw/: o-zwâ ‘to hear’
/ny/: nyE^ ‘calm’ /nw/: o-nwaan ‘to fight’
/ly/: o-lyaa ‘to cry’ /lw/: o-lwâ ‘to vomit’
/ky/: o-kyá ‘tail’ /kw/: Nkwç^n ‘bean’
/gy/: o-NgyEn ‘stranger’ /gw/: Ngwç@m ‘cow’

Of the above sequences, the following occur the most frequently in our lexicon:

[2.21] /ky/ (10) /kw/ (16) /tsw/ (6)

/by/ (8) /lw/ (8) /zw/ (6)
/ly/ (5) /bw (7) /sw/ (5)
/mw/ (7) /gw/ (5)
/tw/ (6)

On the other hand, we have found only one or two examples each of the following
sequences:

[2.22] /pfy/ (2) /byw/ (2)

/bvy/ (2) /dw/ (2)
/vy/ (1) /fw/ (1)
/my/ (1)
/ty/ (1)

It is not clear whether the absence of /fy/ and /vw/ is systematic or whether these non-
occurrences are accidental gaps.
Note that the above are analyzed as /CyV/ and /CwV/ sequences, rather than /CiV/ and
/CuV/. An argument in favor of this representation is that there are cases where these
sequences are followed by a contrastively long vowel, e.g. o-lyaa ‘to cry’ vs. o-lya ‘to pass’),
ondyE@E@ ‘white man’ vs. ndyE@ ‘injury’. If analyzed as vowel sequences, this would produce the
 The Sound System 25

representations o-liaa and ondíE@E@ with three vowels in the same syllable, a sequence that
doesn’t otherwise exist. In addition, if interpreted as glides, we can explain the absence of
/wy/ and /yw/ as a prohibition of glide sequences. Note that the sequence [wi] is not found,
while [yu] is: o-yûp ‘to ask (for)’, iyûr ‘family’.
While nasal prefixes are syllabic and tone-bearing in isolation, e.g. m.bvá ‘dog’, n.dç^b
‘fishhook’, word-initial VNC appears to be syllabified as V.NC. As such, NC can be
considered a complex onset. Consonants which are found in such clusters are illustrated in
[2.23].

[2.23] /mp/: ompçN ‘fish (sp.)’ cf. mpçs ‘Saturday, week’

/mb/: ambuun ‘Mbuun people’ mbu&n ‘forehead’
[mpf]: ompfí ‘morning’ mpfer ‘flour’
/mbv/: ombvul ‘umbrella’ mbvût ‘response’
/nt/: intuntu ‘flower’ ntûl ‘chest’
/nd/: ondûk ‘gun’ ndúN ‘pepper’
/nts/: entsaNga ‘island’ ntsun ‘odor’
/ndz/: ondz"‡n ‘idiot’ ndzçç ‘elephant’
/Nk/: eNkûr ‘owl’ Nku&l ‘cane’
/Ng/: oNgul ‘tobacco’ NguN ‘bell’
/Nkp/: oNkpe&n ‘flea, jigger’ Nkpi ‘lion’
/Ngb/: oNgbatyEm ‘lizard’ Ngbee ‘side’

A nasal cannot precede another nasal /m/ or /n/, the liquid /l/, or the glides /w/ and /y/. A
nasal normally cannot be followed by a fricative. However, besides the name Nzadi, which is
how others refer to the language (the self designation is indzéé), two exceptional borrowings
have been noted: kimvûk ‘group’, oyánsi ‘a Yansi person’. Since /pf/ does not exist without a
preceding nasal, the phonetic sequence [mpf] is best analyzed as /mf/. The sequences [mbv],
[nts], and [ndz] represent a neutralization of /mbv, nts, ndz/ with /mv, ns, nz/. Finally, the few
words with [ny] and [nw] are analyzed as /Cy/ and /Cw/ as in [2.20]: nyE^ ‘calm’, nwí ‘bee’, o-
nwaan ‘to fight’. Evidence that /ny/ and /nw/ are like /ly/ and /lw/ rather than /nd/ etc., is the
fact that there are no glide-initial noun stems which take a VN- prefix. (The compound onya-
ntsyE ‘gorilla’ is likely derived, perhaps from o-nya ‘to excrete’ + ntsyE^ ‘bush’).

2.4.2. Coda Consonants

Of the 682 entries with monosyllabic stems, 440 or 64.5% have the shape CVC or CVVC. Of
these 440, 424 or 96.4% have one of the following eight as their final consonant:
26 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.24] labial alveolar velar

stops p t k
nasals m n N
liquids l r

As seen, the typical codas in Nzadi are either voiceless stops, nasals, or liquids. What is
interesting in [2.24] is that two consonants now appear that cannot be onsets: /N/ and (trilled)
/r/. Recall from [2.11] that CVVC stems can end only in /m/, /n/ or /r/. These can be
compared with the representative examples of CVC stems in [2.25]:

[2.25] /p/: elep ‘chin’ /m/: mbum ‘fruit’

mpip ‘dark’ ntsE^m ‘bright’
o-sup ‘to tease’ o-lwç^m ‘to ask’
/t/: lût ‘spoon’ /n/: idzên ‘tooth’
ntE^t ‘first’ onân ‘big’
o-kât ‘to hold, catch’ o-tîn ‘to escape’
/k/ ondûk ‘gun’ /N/: NguN ‘bell’
mpîk ‘slave’ siN ‘net’
o-lek ‘to surpass’ o- zwç^N ‘to surround’
/l/: ebul ‘metal, iron’ /r/: eNkûr ‘owl’
ntâl ‘expensive’ ekâr ‘incompetent’
o-dzel ‘to wait’ o-ker ‘to do, make’

The following table shows the distribution of vowels before the above eight coda
consonants:

[2.26] -p -t -k -m -n -N -l -r CVC CVVC all:

i, ii 1 2 4 9 13 14 4 4 47 4 51
e 3 1 4 2 11 1 7 5 34 0 34
E, EE 0 3 1 6 12 1 5 3 28 3 31
u, uu 6 3 12 34 12 15 23 21 116 10 126
ç, çç 3 4 4 15 11 13 4 3 51 6 57
a, a 8 4 3 16 20 42 19 13 94 31 125
totals: 21 17 28 82 79 86 62 49 370 54 424

Based on the totals in the bottom row and last columns, the relative lexical frequency of the
different coda consonants and internal vowels can be schematized as in [2.27]:
 The Sound System 27

[2.27] nasals liquids stops

-N > -m > -n > -l > -r > -k > -p > -t

back vowels front vowels

u > a > ç > i > e > E
aa > uu > çç > ii > EE

As seen, the three nasal consonants occur the most frequently in codas, followed by the
two liquids, and the three stops. Back vowels occur more frequently in closed syllables in
lexical entries than front vowels, with /u/ and /a/ being disproportionately represented. While
long vowels are much less frequent in closed syllables, the overrepresentation of /a/ (31 out of
a total of 54) is quite striking, as is the absence of /ee/. (Neither /o/ nor /oo/ occur in closed
syllables, and in fact, there are only two occurrences of /oo/ in the total lexicon: pyoo ‘black’,
ogyòó ‘hiccup’.) Of the eight coda consonants, /-n/ has the least skewed distribution of
preceding front and back vowels: 36 vs. 43.
The above accounts for 424 of the 440 CV(V)C stems in the lexicon. The remaining 16
are the following:

[2.28] /b/ (5) Ngab ‘canoe’ okûb ‘color’

Nkáb ‘paddle’ o-yîb ‘to steal’
ndç^b ‘fishhook’
/s/ (7) kyEs ‘happiness’ makâs ‘anger’ (ma = a borrowed prefix)
mEs ‘table’ mpçs ‘Saturday, week’
Nkîs ‘medicine’ o-pûs ‘to excite, push’
mpâs ‘pain’
/f/ (1) o-dE^f ‘to borrow’
/v/ (1) mpE^v ‘spirit’
/y/ (2) mçy ‘breath, soul’ bç^y ‘servant’

Those ending in /b/ are occasionally pronounced with final [p]. While it is not clear if the
b-final words are native Nzadi forms, the rest are either clear or likely borrowings. It is safe
therefore to treat these 16 entries as exceptional.
Aside from the occurrence of one entry with /b/ and none with /p/, the same coda
consonants occur at the end of bisyllabic stems:
28 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.29] /b/: (1) osakûb ‘log’

/t/: (3) pçtpç^t ‘mud’ sabât ‘shoe’
/k/: (6) ç@mçtúk ‘one’ o-pasuk ‘explode’
/m/: (2) ifakâm ‘stool’ oNgbatyEm ‘lizard’
/n/: (8) mbatên ‘fish (sp.)’ o-tafun ‘to chew’
/N/: (3) dç&Ndç&N ‘okra’ o-kaliN ‘to fry’
/l/: (35) ndikîl ‘poison’ o-belul ‘to heal’
/r/: (2) ikíke&r ‘small’ tukíìr ‘fish (sp.)’
total: 60

Of the above, only final /l/ can be said be truly general, as a number of verbs end in the
non-productive -Vl suffix (see §6.2.3). Most of the other entries are either reduplications,
borrowings, or frozen compounds.

2.4.3. Intervocalic stem consonants

As seen in [2.5], of 814 lexical entries, 125 or 15.4% have bisyllabic stems. (Seven entries
have trisyllabic stems, and one entry has a quadrisyllabic stem—see below.) Ignoring lexical
entries which are or appear to be compounds, the lexicon contains 66 bisyllabic and 72
trisyllabic stems whose second syllable begins with a single consonant. Those consonants
occurring in three or more entries are indicated below:

[2.30] labial alveolar velar

stops b t k
fricatives f s
sonorants m l

The number of each consonant and examples are provided in [2.31].

[2.31] /b/ (7) iziba ‘lake’ o-kabul ‘to split, share’

/t/ (10) nzEtç^l ‘voyage’ o-kutan ‘to meet’
/k/ (19) isíké ‘horn’ o-sakan ‘to play’
/f/ (6) tufîn ‘pus’ o-tafun ‘to chew’
/s/ (7) ikású ‘kola’ o-kçsul ‘to cough’
/m/ (6) imE@mE ‘sheep’ ísyE@mE ‘six’
/l/ (11) okali ‘yesterday’ o-kaliN ‘to fry’

This leaves the following eight entries which have other intervocalic consonants: pEpE^
‘papaya’, okpú !kpê ‘short’, Ngyovûl ‘question’, o-yuvul ‘to ask (someone)’, ináána ‘eight’, o-
fwanan ‘to resemble’, ntsíìrí ‘canerat’, nç&wE ‘today’.
 The Sound System 29

In addition, there are 49 (non-reduplicated) entries with a consonant cluster in second

position. Of these 49 entries, (voiced) NC, Cs, and nk sequences account for 40:

[2.32] NC: /mb/ (7) pambú ‘worm’ m-pE@mbE@ ‘white’

/nd/ (4) mpçndç@ ‘millet’ o-bçndçl ‘to please’
/Ng/ (7) màáNgu&l ‘mango’ o-zaNgul ‘to lift up’
[ndz] (1) mpandzí ‘rib’
Cs: /ts/ (3) o-dyatsa ‘to lead’ o-zitsa ‘to obey’
/ks/ (2) o-vuksa ‘to mix’ o-niksa ‘to grind’
/fs/ (1) o-dEfsa ‘to lend’ cf. o-dE^f ‘to borrow’
/ms/ (1) o-kumsa ‘to praise’
[nts] (4) o-bán@tsa ‘to think’ o-yuntsa ‘to try’
/Ns/ (6) o-gçNsa ‘to expand’ o-bçNsa ‘to repair’
/rs/ (1) o-sarsa ‘to help’
/nk/ (3) o-sçnka ‘to write’ o-mçnka ‘shine, be visible’

In the above table [ndz] is in brackets because it could derive from either /ndz/ or /nz/. While
[nts] could also derive from /nts/ or /ns/, we know that the latter is correct because the above
verbs all have the structure CVCsa (see §6.2.1). The remaining 9 cases of intervocalic
consonant clusters are not systematic and are considered exceptional. Three are likely
unanalyzable compounds: çngbatyEm ‘lizard’, N@g yizyâ ‘self’, o-la Ndil ‘to supervise’. The
remaining are borrowings: keNglo& ‘bicycle’, o-pukmun ‘to tempt’, mámpa ‘bread’, kamyç^
‘car’, oyánsi ‘a Yansi person’, mpaantru ‘trousers’. In addition to the above 49 entries, the
following eight reduplications have been found:

[2.33] /tp/ (2) pçtpç^t ‘mud’ pEtpE@t ‘softness’

/kt/ (1) tuktuk ‘motorcycle’
/kb/ (1) bukbuk ‘fish (sp.)’
/nt/ (1) intúntu ‘flower’
/Nd/ (2) dç&Ndç&N ‘okra’ diNdíN ‘middle of night’
/lt/ (1) taltál ‘mirror’

2.5. Phonological rules

A number of phonological rules affect vowels and consonants (also tones—see Chapter 3).
Most of these are morphophonemic in the sense that they merge contrasting segments.

2.5.1. Vowels

The major processes which affect vowels are vowel coalescence, shortening, centralization,
vowel harmony, and nasalization. The first two refer to processes that apply to vowel + vowel
30 A Grammar of Nzadi

sequences, while the third concerns the realization of /e/ as [I] or [U] in casual speech. In most
cases these rules are optional and depend on tempo or speech register: the faster or more
casual the speech, the more likely the rule will apply. Given their optionality, they may
produce variants in some cases.

2.5.1.1. Vowel Coalescence

Whenever two vowels V1 and V2 occur in succession, depending on a number of factors, one
of three things can happen, as schematized in [2.34]. The exact form that vowel coalescence
will take depends not only on tempo, as has been pointed out, but also on the construction.

[2.34] Coalescence Process Occurs When Examples

(i) V1 deletes without affecting V1 + V2 ! V2 V1 is a non- [2.36-39]
the length of V2 stem vowel
(ii) V1 deletes with compensatory V1 + V2 ! V2V2 V1 is a stem [2.39-40]
lengthening of V2 vowel
(iii) The two vowels can be V1 + V2 ! V1V2 [2.38-41, 45]
realized without modification

The vowels /i/ and /u/ are usually not affected by these processes, but instead appear to
become shorter, giving the impression of gliding to [y] and [w], respectively.
An example of obligatory V1 deletion without compensatory lengthening of V2 occurs
when a tense marker /a/, /o/ or /e/ is followed by a non-identical object agreement marker /o/
or /e/. The examples in [2.35] which involve a direct object noun show that the perfect is
marked by /â/, the past by /ó/, and the progressive by /ê/:

[2.35] mì â búl mwa&àn mì â búl ba&àn ‘I have hit the child’ / ‘ ... the children’
mì ó búl mwa&àn mì ó búl ba&àn ‘I hit the child’ / ‘ ... the children’
mì é búl mwa&àn mì é búl ba&àn ‘I am hitting the child’ ‘ ... the children’

When the direct object is a pronoun, an optional object agreement marker may occur (see
§8.3.7). As the following examples show, this marker is /o/ when the object is ndé ‘him/her’,
and /e/ when it is bç& ‘them’:

[2.36] mì ô búl ndé mì ê búl bç& ‘I have hit him/her’ / ‘I have hit them’
mì ó búl ndé mì é búl bç& ‘I hit him/her’ / ‘I hit them’
mì ó búl n@dé mì é búl bç^ ‘I am hitting him/her’ / ‘I am hitting them’

As seen, a+o ! o, a+e ! e, o+e ! e, and e+o ! o. A similar obligatory process occurs
when the genitive linker /é/ is followed by a vowel prefix:
 The Sound System 31

[2.37] osim + é + muur ! osim e múùr ‘the person’s rope’

osim + é + ibaa ! osim ibáà ‘the man’s rope’
osim + é + oNgyEn ! osim oNgyE^n ‘the stranger’s rope’

At first it might seem that /é/ is present only when followed by a consonant, as in the first
example; however, the tone changes on the noun show that it is definitely there, but deleted.
While the above vowel coalescences are obligatory, optional vowel deletion without
compensatory lengthening occurs when the locative marker kó ‘to, at’ is followed by a vowel:

[2.38] kó + ikç@çr@ ! kó íkç@çr$ ~ kíkç@çr$ ‘to the frog’

kó + etúN ! kó étûN ~ kétûN ‘to the fly’
kó + okáàr ! kó ókáàr ~ kókáàr ‘to the woman’
kó + akáàr ! kó ákáàr ~ kákáàr ‘to the women’
cf. kó + muur ! kó múùr ‘to the person’

In other cases optional coalescence is produced with length, e.g. after the conjunction mE
‘but’, which is borrowed from French:

[2.39] mE ikç@çr@ !á bva ~ miikç@çr@ !á bva ‘but a frog has fallen’

mE etúN á bva ~ meetúN á bva ‘but a fly has fallen’
mE okáár !á bva ~ mookáár !á bva ‘but a woman has fallen’
mE akáár !á bva ~ maakáár !á bva ‘but women have fallen’
cf. mE muur á bva ‘but a person has fallen’

Similarly, the vowel of the pronouns ya&` ‘you sg.’, ndé ‘s/he, him/her’, nç& ‘it’, bç& ‘they,
them (human)’, and m ç& ‘they, them (non-human)’ optionally undergo coalescence with
compensatory lengthening, as seen in the following variants:

[2.40] perfect: ya á bva ndé á bva nç á bva bç á bva mç á bva ‘you sg. etc.
yàá bva ndáá bva nàá bva bàá bva màá bva have fallen’
past: ya ó bvê ndé ó bvê nç ó bvê bç ó bvê mç ó bvê ‘you sg. etc.
yòó bve& ndóó bvê nòó bvê bòó bvê mòó bvê fell’
progressive: ya é bve& ndé é bve& nç é bve& bç é bve& mç é bve& ‘you sg. etc.
yèé bve& ndéé bve& nèé bve& bèé bve& mèé bve& are falling’

The pronouns m"‡` ‘1st person singular’ and b"‡ ‘1st person singular’ do not undergo
coalescence. In general, the vowel /i/ does not delete, as seen also in the following examples:
32 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.41] tí + ikç@çr@ ! tí ikç@ç@r ‘with a frog’

tí + etúN ! tí etúN ‘with a fly’
tí + okáàr ! tí okáàr ‘with a woman’
tí + akáàr ! tí akáàr ‘with women’
cf. tí + muur ! tí muur ‘with a person’

In general, when the assimilating V1 is a stem vowel, vowel coalescence is optional, but,
if occuring, a long vowel results. This is observed especially clearly when an open syllable
stem precedes the genitive linker /é/. As seen, long and short vowels merge in this context:

[2.42] atE@ + é + mùùr ! atéé múùr ‘the person’s saliva’

osEE + é + mùùr ! osee múùr ‘the person’s pain’
adza + é + mùùr ! adzéé múùr ‘the person’s water’
esaa + é + mùùr ! esee múùr ‘the person’s food’

As seen, both long and short vowels assimilate before /é/, with the potential mergers. (Below
we will see that long vowels shorten before another vowel, also producing mergers.) When
the stem vowel is /u/, /o/ or /ç/, optional coalescence will either shorten the vowel or convert
it to [w]:

[2.43] otû + é + wàá ! otwéé wàá ‘the night of the village’

odzó + é + mùùr ! odzwéé múùr ‘the person’s snake’
ikwç + é + mùùr ! ikwee múùr ‘the person’s banana’

Since the presence of /é/ sometimes distinguishes singular and plural possession (§5.3.1),
in some cases the resulting length will signal the difference:

[2.44] ntswé + bç& ! ntswé bç& ‘their fish (sg.)’

ntswé + é + bç& ! ntswéé bç& ‘their fish (pl.)’

Although it sometimes does occur, vowels which meet when two lexical words occur in
sequence tend not to undergo coalescence:

[2.45] [ai] : esúú na o dzé mbvá ikwç ‘the day that the dog ate the banana’
[ae] : esúú na o dzé mbvá esaa ‘the day that the dog ate the food’
[ao] : esúú na o dzé mbvá okpá ‘the day that the dog ate the salt’

2.5.1.2. Vowel Shortening

Where vowel coalescence does not occur, vowel shortening will apply to a long vowel which
is immediately followed by another vowel, e.g. to ibaa ‘man’ in the following:
 The Sound System 33

[2.46] [ai] : esúú na o dzé iba ikwç ‘the day that the man ate the banana’
[ae] : esúú na o dzé iba esaa ‘the day that the man ate the food’
[ao] : esúú na o dzé iba okpá ‘the day that the man ate the salt’

2.5.1.3 Vowel Centralization

In normal speech a short /e/ in open syllable is often centralized to [ˆ]. When preceded by a
labial consonant, it may be realized [ˆ] or [U]. This happens especially to /Ca/ verbs when they
change to /Ce/ in the past tense. The following are among the examples recorded:

[2.47] [dzˆ] : oNgér o dzé bç& ‘what did they eat?’

[pˆ] : ó pe ndé íkwç ‘give him a banana!’
[pU] : kó nE baar o pé óN@k àán ‘to whom did the people give the book?’
[fU] : mi o fé ndzéé ‘I came from the river’

For variations in the realization of vowels in reduplication see §6.4.2.

2.5.1.4. Vowel Harmony

Before leaving vowel alternations, a word should be added concerning vowel harmony. Given
the historical shortening of words, it is not surprising to find that there is no stem-level vowel
harmony, as found elsewhere in Bantu. Of the 52 bisyllabic verb stems in the lexicon, the
three vowels /i, u, a/ occur freely in the second syllable: four bisyllabic verbs have /i/, 24 have
/u/ and 22 have /a/. The two exceptions are o-bçkçl ‘to bring up’ and o-bçndçl ‘to please’.
Since an additional 19 verbs have the shape CV(N)Cul, it is tempting to see the -çl realization
of these two verbs as vowel height harmony, i.e. -ul ! -çl after CçC-. However, one verb,
o-kçsul ‘to cough’, does occur without height harmony. Since the numbers are so small, we
cannot have confidence that the process is live in Nzadi. In addition, some of these verbs may
be borrowed.
Another harmony does seem more reliable, however. The noun prefixes /e-/ and /o-/
harmonize to E- and ç- when the stem has an identical /E/ or /ç/ vowel:
34 A Grammar of Nzadi

[2.48] harmony no harmony

/e-/ : EkE@E@ ‘leaf’ ekçç ‘bee’
EsyEn ‘thorns’ ekwç^m ‘broom’
EbyE@m ‘mosquito’ etçk ‘pipes’
/o-/ : çsçç ‘flamingo’ osyE@n ‘thorn’
çtsç@ ‘head’ okEEr ‘belly’
çtçk ‘pipe’ osEE ‘pain’

At times the harmony is barely noticeable, particularly when the stem begins with Cw.
We thus have recorded both oswç$ç@ ~ çswç$ç@ ‘intestines’. It should be noted that the infinitive
prefix does not harmonize, e.g. o-tçk ‘to boil’ (vs. çtçk ‘pipe’). When the initial consonant is
nasal, harmony appears to be optional: o-nç@ ~ ç-nç@ ‘to drink’, also ómçtúk ~ ç@mçtúk ‘one’,
ómç ~ ç@mç ‘certain’.
The last process affecting vowels is nasalization. In Nzadi, although not written in the
orthography, a few open syllable stems beginning with /m/ or /n/ have noticeable vowel
nasalization. Most of these have a glide; two are clearly related to stems which have lost their
final nasal:

[2.49] /m/ : mwa& [mwãÛ] ‘small’ cf. mwa&àn ‘child’

o-mwE@ [o-mwEè)] ‘to show’ o-mç@n ‘to see’
/n-/ : nwí [nw"‚ê] ‘bee’
o-nç@ [o-nç)]è ‘to drink’
o-nwô [o-nwo)Ê] ‘to rain’

2.5.2. Consonants

Compared to vowels, there are surprisingly few processes affecting consonants. The main
alternation concerns the effect that a nasal has on a following consonant. The occurring NC
sequences were presented in [2.23], where it was observed that the postnasal consonant must
be a stop or affricate. Nouns which have an e- prefix in the singular and a N- prefix in the
plural potentially exhibit alternations such as those in [2.46].

[2.50] Esaa ‘feather’ ntsaa ‘feathers’

EsáN ‘tear’ ntsáN ‘tears’
esen ‘louse’ ntsen ‘lice’

As seen, the /s/ of the singular form occuring after the singular prefix e- or E- becomes
[ts] after the plural prefix n-. While we expect a similar change of /f/, /v/ and /z/ to [pf], [bv]
and [dz], respectively, in the plural, no stems beginning with /v/ or /z/ belong to this singular-
plural pairing, and the one f-initial noun, efur ‘dust’, does not take a nasal in the plural.
 The Sound System 35

We can see a much fuller range of alternations in verbs, where there is a nasal prefix
marking first person singular object agreement (cf. §8.3.7):

[2.51] f ! pf ndé ó fûr ‘he paid’ ndé ó mpfúr m"‡` ‘he paid me’
s ! ts ndé ó sársa ‘he helped’ ndé ó ntsársa m"‡` ‘he helped me’
v ! bv ndé ó vyâ ‘he called’ ndé ó mbvyá m"‡` ‘he called me’
z ! dz ndé ó zî ‘he hid’ ndé ó ndzí m"‡` ‘he hid me’

The other consonants that cannot occur after a nasal are the nasal and oral sonorants /m,
n, l, w, y/. When a verb stem begins with one of these consonants, the nasal fails to appear
and the object pronoun m"‡` appears without preverbal agreement:

[2.48] m!m ndé ó mç^n ‘he saw’ ndé ó mç@n m"‡` ‘he saw me’
n!n ndé ó nûk ‘he shot’ ndé ó núk m"‡` ‘he shot me’
l!l ndé ó lç^N ‘he taught’ ndé ó lç@N m"‡` ‘he taught me’
y!y ndé ó yúvul ‘he asked’ ndé ó yúvul m"‡` ‘he asked me’
w!w ndé ó wE@E$ ‘he chose’ ndé ó wE@E@ m"‡` ‘he chose me’

The final issue concerns syllable-final /N/ and /r/. As seen in the following examples,
there is some reason to establish a link between monosyllabic CVN and bisyllabic CVNgVC
stems:

[2.49] o-kaN ‘to close’ o-kaNgul ‘to open’

o-lç^N ‘to teach’ o-luNguk ‘to think, learn’
o-zâN ‘to lack’ o-zaNgul ‘to lift up’

However, if we were to recognize final [N] as /Ng/, the question would arise as to why
there are no stems which end in /mb/, and only one borrowing, matç@nd ‘thanks’, which ends
in /nd/. We can thus only recognize the complementarity: [N] only occurs at the end of a
word, while [Ng] occurs elsewhere.
The same must be said concerning /r/, which occurs only word-finally except for the
following, at least the last two of which are clearly borrowings: o-sarsa ‘to help’, ntsíìrí
‘canerat’, mpaantrû ‘pants’, oká !é lépre ‘leprosy’. It would be tempting to relate final [r] to
one of the onset consonants. Since among the likely candidates both /t/ and /l/ also occur
finally, this leaves /d/, which does not occur as a coda other than in matç@nd ‘thanks’. Other
than this complementary distribution there is, however, no reason to assume that final [r] is a
realization of underlying /d/.
Another Random Scribd Document
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prohibited any citizen from ever submitting a proposition for its
reconquest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon
counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora,
and there, on the stone usually occupied by the official herald,
pronounced to the crowd around a short elegiac poem,[158] which he
had previously composed on the subject of Salamis. He enforced
upon them the disgrace of abandoning the island, and wrought so
powerfully upon their feelings, that they rescinded the prohibitory
law: “Rather (he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city, and
become a citizen of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian,
branded with the shame of surrendered Salamis!” The Athenians
again entered into the war, and conferred upon him the command of
it,—partly, as we are told, at the instigation of Peisistratus, though
the latter must have been at this time (600-594 B. C.) a very young
man, or rather a boy.[159]
The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was
recovered, are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing to
Solon various stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers;
unfortunately, no authority is given for any of them. According to
that which seems the most plausible, he was directed by the
Delphian god, first to propitiate the local heroes of the island; and
he accordingly crossed over to it by night, for the purpose of
sacrificing to the heroes Periphêmus and Kychreus, on the
Salaminian shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers were then
levied for the attack of the island, under the stipulation that if they
were victorious they should hold it in property and citizenship.[160]
They were safely landed on an outlying promontory, while Solon,
having been fortunate enough to seize a ship which the Megarians
had sent to watch the proceedings, manned it with Athenians, and
sailed straight towards the city of Salamis, to which the five hundred
Athenians who had landed also directed their march. The Megarians
marched out from the city to repel the latter, and during the heat of
the engagement, Solon, with his Megarian ship, and Athenian crew,
sailed directly to the city: the Megarians, interpreting this as the
return of their own crew, permitted the ship to approach without
resistance, and the city was thus taken by surprise. Permission
having been given to the Megarians to quit the island, Solon took
possession of it for the Athenians, erecting a temple to Enyalius, the
god of war, on Cape Skiradium, near the city of Salamis.[161]
The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for the
recovery of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued long as
well as disastrous to both parties. At last, it was agreed between
them to refer the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, and five
Spartans were appointed to decide it,—Kritolaidas, Amompharetus,
Hypsêchidas, Anaxilas, and Kleomenês. The verdict in favor of
Athens was founded on evidence which it is somewhat curious to
trace. Both parties attempted to show that the dead bodies buried in
the island conformed to their own peculiar mode of interment, and
both parties are said to have cited verses from the catalogue of the
Iliad,[162]—each accusing the other of error or interpolation. But the
Athenians had the advantage on two points; first, there were oracles
from Delphi, wherein Salamis was mentioned with the epithet
Ionian; next, Philæus and Eurysakês, sons of the Telamonian Ajax,
the great hero of the island, had accepted the citizenship of Athens,
made over Salamis to the Athenians, and transferred their own
residences to Braurôn and Melitê in Attica, where the deme or gens
Philaidæ still worshipped Philæus as its eponymous ancestor. Such a
title was held sufficient, and Salamis was adjudged by the five
Spartans to Attica,[163] with which it ever afterwards remained
incorporated until the days of Macedonian supremacy. Two centuries
and a half later, when the orator Æschinês argued the Athenian right
to Amphipolis against Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements of
the title were indeed put forward, but more in the way of preface or
introduction to the substantial political grounds.[164] But in the year
600 B. C., the authority of the legend was more deep-seated and
operative, and adequate by itself to determine a favorable verdict.
In addition to the conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his
reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against
the extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Kirrha, of which
more will be said in a coming chapter; and the favor of the oracle
was probably not without its effect in procuring for him that
encouraging prophecy with which his legislative career opened.
It is on the occasion of Solon’s legislation, that we obtain our first
glimpse—unfortunately, but a glimpse—of the actual state of Attica
and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive picture, presenting to us
political discord and private suffering combined.
Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica,
who were separated into three factions,—the pedieis, or men of the
plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neighboring territory,
among whom the greatest number of rich families were included;
the mountaineers in the east and north of Attica, called diakrii, who
were on the whole the poorest party; and the paralii in the southern
portion of Attica, from sea to sea, whose means and social position
were intermediate between the two.[165] Upon what particular points
these intestine disputes turned we are not distinctly informed; they
were not, however, peculiar to the period immediately preceding the
archontate of Solon; they had prevailed before, and they reappear
afterwards prior to the despotism of Peisistratus, the latter standing
forward as the leader of the diakrii, and as champion, real or
pretended, of the poorer population.
But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels were aggravated
by something much more difficult to deal with,—a general mutiny of
the poorer population against the rich, resulting from misery
combined with oppression. The thêtes, whose condition we have
already contemplated in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, are now
presented to us as forming the bulk of the population of Attica,—the
cultivating tenants, metayers, and small proprietors of the country.
They are exhibited as weighed down by debts and dependence, and
driven in large numbers out of a state of freedom into slavery,—the
whole mass of them, we are told, being in debt to the rich, who are
proprietors of the greater part of the soil.[166] They had either
borrowed money for their own necessities, or they tilled the lands of
the rich as dependent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of the
produce, and in this capacity they were largely in arrear.
All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh law of
debtor and creditor,—once prevalent in Greece, Italy, Asia, and a
large portion of the world,—combined with the recognition of slavery
as a legitimate status, and of the right of one man to sell himself as
well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to fulfil
his contract was liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor,
until he could find means either of paying it or working it out; and
not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmarried daughters
and sisters also, whom the law gave him the power of selling.[167]
The poor man thus borrowed upon the security of his body, to
translate literally the Greek phrase, and upon that of the persons of
his family; and so severely had these oppressive contracts been
enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from freedom to
slavery in Attica itself,—many others had been sold for exportation,—
and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom by selling
their children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller properties in
Attica were under mortgage, signified,—according to the formality
usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout the historical
times,—by a stone pillar erected on the land, inscribed with the
name of the lender and the amount of the loan. The proprietors of
these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavorable turn of events,
had no other prospect except that of irremediable slavery for
themselves and their families, either in their own native country,
robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian region where the Attic
accent would never meet their ears. Some had fled the country to
escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a miserable
subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations: upon several,
too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust condemnation and
corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in regard to money sacred
and profane, in regard to matters public as well as private, being
thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious.
 The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this
system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than
that of the Gallic plebs,—and the injustices of the rich, in whom all
political power was then vested, are facts well attested by the poems
of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved to us:[168]
and it appears that immediately preceding the time of his
archonship, the evils had ripened to such a point,—and the
determination of the mass of sufferers, to extort for themselves
some mode of relief, had become so pronounced,—that the existing
laws could no longer be enforced. According to the profound remark
of Aristotle,—that seditions are generated by great causes but out of
small incidents,[169]—we may conceive that some recent events had
occurred as immediate stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors,—
like those which lend so striking an interest to the early Roman
annals, as the inflaming sparks of violent popular movements for
which the train had long before been laid. Condemnations by the
archons, of insolvent debtors, may have been unusually numerous,
or the maltreatment of some particular debtor, once a respected
freeman, in his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act
vividly upon the public sympathies,—like the case of the old plebeian
centurion at Rome,[170]—first impoverished by the plunder of the
enemy, then reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to his creditor
as an insolvent,—who claimed the protection of the people in the
forum, rousing their feelings to the highest pitch by the marks of the
slave-whip visible on his person. Some such incidents had probably
happened, though we have no historians to recount them; moreover,
it is not unreasonable to imagine, that that public mental affliction
which the purifier Epimenidês had been invoked to appease, as it
sprung in part from pestilence, so it had its cause partly in years of
sterility, which must of course have aggravated the distress of the
small cultivators. However this may be, such was the condition of
things in 594 B. C., through mutiny of the poor freemen and thêtes,
and uneasiness of the middling citizens, that the governing oligarchy,
unable either to enforce their private debts or to maintain their
political power, were obliged to invoke the well-known wisdom and
integrity of Solon. Though his vigorous protest—which doubtless
rendered him acceptable to the mass of the people—against the
iniquity of the existing system had already been proclaimed in his
poems, they still hoped that he would serve as an auxiliary, to help
them over their difficulties, and they therefore chose him, nominally,
as archon along with Philombrotus, but with power in substance
dictatorial.
It had happened in several Grecian states, that the governing
oligarchies, either by quarrels among their own members or by the
general bad condition of the people under their government, were
deprived of that hold upon the public mind which was essential to
their power; and sometimes, as in the case of Pittakus of Mitylênê,
anterior to the archonship of Solon, and often in the factions of the
Italian republics in the Middle Ages, the collision of opposing forces
had rendered society intolerable, and driven all parties to acquiesce
in the choice of some reforming dictator. Usually, however, in the
early Greek oligarchies, this ultimate crisis was anticipated by some
ambitious individual, who availed himself of the public discontent, to
overthrow the oligarchy, and usurp the powers of a despot; and so,
probably, it might have happened in Athens, had not the recent
failure of Kylôn, with all its miserable consequences, operated as a
deterring motive. It is curious to read, in the words of Solon himself,
the temper in which his appointment was construed by a large
portion of the community, but most especially by his own friends:
and we are to bear in mind that at this early day, so far as our
knowledge goes, democratical government was a thing unknown in
Greece,—all Grecian governments were either oligarchical or
despotic, the mass of the freemen having not yet tasted of
constitutional privilege. His own friends and supporters were the first
to urge him, while redressing the prevalent discontents, to multiply
partisans for himself personally, and seize the supreme power: they
even “chid him as a madman, for declining to haul up the net when
the fish were already enmeshed.”[171] The mass of the people, in
despair with their lot, would gladly have seconded him in such an
attempt, and many even among the oligarchy might have acquiesced
in his personal government, from the mere apprehension of
something worse, if they resisted it. That Solon might easily have
made himself despot, admits of little doubt; and though the position
of a Greek despot was always perilous, he would have had greater
facility for maintaining himself in it than Peisistratus possessed after
him; so that nothing but the combination of prudence and virtue
which marks his lofty character, restricted him within the trust
specially confided to him. To the surprise of every one,—to the
dissatisfaction of his own friends,—under the complaints alike, as he
says, of various extreme and dissentient parties, who required him
to adopt measures fatal to the peace of society,[172]—he set himself
honestly to solve the very difficult and critical problem submitted to
him.
Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the
poorer class of debtors; and to their relief Solon’s first measure, the
memorable seisachtheia, or shaking off of burdens, was directed.
The relief which it afforded was complete and immediate. It
cancelled at once all those contracts in which the debtor had
borrowed on the security of either his person or of his land: it
forbade all future loans or contracts in which the person of the
debtor was pledged as security: it deprived the creditor in future of
all power to imprison, or enslave, or extort work from his debtor, and
confined him to an effective judgment at law, authorizing the seizure
of the property of the latter. It swept off all the numerous mortgage
pillars from the landed properties in Attica, and left the land free
from all past claims. It liberated, and restored to their full rights, all
those debtors who were actually in slavery under previous legal
adjudication; and it even provided the means—we do not know how
—of repurchasing in foreign lands, and bringing back to a renewed
life of liberty in Attica, many insolvents who had been sold for
exportation.[173] And while Solon forbade every Athenian to pledge
or sell his own person into slavery, he took a step farther in the
same direction, by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son, his
daughter, or an unmarried sister under his tutelage,—excepting only
the case in which either of the latter might be detected in unchastity.
[174] Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous with the
seisachtheia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms, seems
doubtful.
By this extensive measure the poor debtors,—the thêtes, small
tenants, and proprietors,—together with their families, were rescued
from suffering and peril. But these were not the only debtors in the
state: the creditors and landlords of the exonerated thêtes were
doubtless in their turn debtors to others, and were less able to
discharge their obligations in consequence of the loss inflicted upon
them by the seisachtheia. It was to assist these wealthier debtors,
whose bodies were in no danger,—yet without exonerating them
entirely,—that Solon resorted to the additional expedient of debasing
the money standard; he lowered the standard of the drachma in a
proportion something more than twenty-five per cent., so that one
hundred drachmas of the new standard contained no more silver
than seventy-three of the old, or one hundred of the old were
equivalent to one hundred and thirty-eight of the new. By this
change, the creditors of these more substantial debtors were obliged
to submit to a loss, while the debtors acquired an exemption, to the
extent of about twenty-seven per cent.[175]
Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned by
the archons to atīmy (civil disfranchisement) should be restored to
their full privileges of citizens,—excepting, however, from this
indulgence those who had been condemned by the ephetæ, or by
the areopagus, or by the phylo-basileis (the four kings of the tribes),
after trial in the prytaneium, on charges either of murder or treason.
[176] So wholesale a measure of amnesty affords strong grounds for
believing that the previous judgments of the archons had been
intolerably harsh; and it is to be recollected that the Drakonian
ordinances were then in force.
Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the
dangerous discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men and
leaders of the people, whose insolence and iniquity he has himself
so sharply denounced in his poems, and whose views in nominating
him he had greatly disappointed,[177] should have detested
propositions which robbed them without compensation of so many
of their legal rites, it is easy to imagine. But the statement of
Plutarch, that the poor emancipated debtors were also dissatisfied,
from having expected that Solon would not only remit their debts,
but also redivide the soil of Attica, seems utterly incredible; nor is it
confirmed by any passage now remaining of the Solonian poems.
[178] Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as having in their minds the
comparison with Lykurgus, and the equality of property at Sparta,
which, as I have already endeavored to show,[179] is a fiction; and
even had it been true, as matter of history long past and antiquated,
would not have been likely to work upon the minds of the multitude
of Attica in the forcible way that the biographer supposes. The
seisachtheia must have exasperated the feelings and diminished the
fortunes of many persons; but it gave to the large body of thêtes
and small proprietors all that they could possibly have hoped. And
we are told that after a short interval it became eminently
acceptable in the general public mind, and procured for Solon a
great increase of popularity,—all ranks concurring in a common
sacrifice of thanksgiving and harmony.[180] One incident there was
which occasioned an outcry of indignation. Three rich friends of
Solon, all men of great family in the state, and bearing names which
will hereafter reappear in this history as borne by their descendants,
—Konôn, Kleinias, and Hipponikus,—having obtained from Solon
some previous hint of his designs, profited by it, first, to borrow
money, and next, to make purchases of lands; and this selfish
breach of confidence would have disgraced Solon himself, had it not
been found that he was personally a great loser, having lent money
to the extent of five talents. We should have been glad to learn what
authority Plutarch had for this anecdote, which could hardly have
been recorded in Solon’s own poems.[181]
In regard to the whole measure of the seisachtheia, indeed,
though the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient authors
gave different statements, both of its purport and of its extent. Most
of them construed it as having cancelled indiscriminately all money
contracts; while Androtion, and others, thought that it did nothing
more than lower the rate of interest and depreciate the currency to
the extent of twenty-seven per cent., leaving the letter of the
contracts unchanged. How Androtion came to maintain such an
opinion we cannot easily understand, for the fragments now
remaining from Solon seem distinctly to refute it, though, on the
other hand, they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of
the opposite view entertained by many writers,—that all money
contracts indiscriminately were rescinded:[182] against which there is
also a farther reason, that, if the fact had been so, Solon could have
had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement
supposes that there must have been some debtors, at least, whose
contracts remained valid, and whom, nevertheless, he desired
partially to assist. His poems distinctly mention three things: 1. The
removal of the mortgage pillars. 2. The enfranchisement of the land.
3. The protection, liberation, and restoration of the persons of
endangered or enslaved debtors. All these expressions point
distinctly to the thêtes and small proprietors, whose sufferings and
peril were the most urgent, and whose case required a remedy
immediate as well as complete: we find that his repudiation of debts
was carried far enough to exonerate them, but no farther.
It seems to have been the respect entertained for the character
of Solon which partly occasioned these various misconceptions of his
ordinances for the relief of debtors: Androtion in ancient, and some
eminent critics in modern times, are anxious to make out that he
gave relief without loss or injustice to any one. But this opinion is
altogether inadmissible: the loss to creditors, by the wholesale
abrogation of numerous prëexisting contracts, and by the partial
depreciation of the coin, is a fact not to be disguised. The
seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far as it rescinded previous
agreements, but highly salutary in its consequences, is to be
vindicated by showing that in no other way could the bonds of
government have been held together, or the misery of the multitude
alleviated. We are to consider, first, the great personal cruelty of
these preëxisting contracts, which condemned the body of the free
debtor and his family to slavery; next, the profound detestation
created by such a system in the large mass of the poor, against both
the judges and the creditors by whom it had been enforced, which
rendered their feelings unmanageable, so soon as they came
together under the sentiment of a common danger, and with the
determination to insure to each other mutual protection. Moreover,
the law which vests a creditor with power over the person of his
debtor, so as to convert him into a slave, is likely to give rise to a
class of loans, which inspire nothing but abhorrence,—money lent
with the foreknowledge that the borrower will be unable to repay it,
but also in the conviction that the value of his person as a slave will
make good the loss; thus reducing him to a condition of extreme
misery, for the purpose sometimes of aggrandizing, sometimes of
enriching, the lender. Now the foundation on which the respect for
contracts rests, under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the very
reverse of this; it rests on the firm conviction that such contracts are
advantageous to both parties as a class, and that to break up the
confidence essential to their existence would produce extensive
mischief throughout all society. The man whose reverence for the
obligation of a contract is now the most profound, would have
entertained a very different sentiment if he had witnessed the
dealings of lender and borrower at Athens, under the old ante-
Solonian law. The oligarchy had tried their best to enforce this law of
debtor and creditor, with its disastrous series of contracts, and the
only reason why they consented to invoke the aid of Solon, was
because they had lost the power of enforcing it any longer, in
consequence of the newly awakened courage and combination of
the people. That which they could not do for themselves, Solon
could not have done for them, even had he been willing; nor had he
in his possession the means either of exempting or compensating
those creditors, who, separately taken, were open to no reproach;
indeed, in following his proceedings, we see plainly that he thought
compensation due, not to the creditors, but to the past sufferings of
the enslaved debtors, since he redeemed several of them from
foreign captivity, and brought them back to their home. It is certain
that no measure, simply and exclusively prospective, would have
sufficed for the emergency: there was an absolute necessity for
overruling all that class of preëxisting rights which had produced so
violent a social fever. While therefore, to this extent, the seisachtheia
cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confidently affirm that the
injustice inflicted was an indispensable price, paid for the
maintenance of the peace of society, and for the final abrogation of
a disastrous system as regarded insolvents.[183] And the feeling as
well as the legislation universal in the modern European world, by
interdicting beforehand all contracts for selling a man’s person or
that of his children into slavery, goes far to sanction practically the
Solonian repudiation.
One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure,
combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in
the law,—it settled finally the question to which it referred. Never
again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing
Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment which grew up at
Athens, under the Solonian money-law, and under the democratical
government, was one of high respect for the sanctity of contracts.
Not only was there never any demand in the Athenian democracy for
new tables or a depreciation of the money standard, but a formal
abnegation of any such projects was inserted in the solemn oath
taken annually by the numerous diakasts, who formed the popular
judicial body, called hêliæa, or the hêliastic jurors,—the same oath
which pledged them to uphold the democratical constitution, also
bound them to repudiate all proposals either for an abrogation of
debts or for a redivision of the lands.[184] There can be little doubt
that under the Solonian law, which enabled the creditor to seize the
property of his debtor, but gave him no power over the person, the
system of money-lending assumed a more beneficial character: the
old noxious contracts, mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman
and his children, disappeared, and loans of money took their place,
founded on the property and prospective earnings of the debtor,
which were in the main useful to both parties, and therefore
maintained their place in the moral sentiment of the public. And
though Solon had found himself compelled to rescind all the
mortgages on land subsisting in his time, we see money freely lent
upon this same security, throughout the historical times of Athens,
and the evidentiary mortgage pillars remaining ever after
undisturbed.
In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman law, a
distinction is commonly made between the principal and the interest
of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend them
indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his promise to
repay the principal, the public will regard him as having committed a
wrong which he must make good by his person; but there is not the
same unanimity as to his promise to pay interest: on the contrary,
the very exaction of interest will be regarded by many in the same
light in which the English law considers usurious interest, as tainting
the whole transaction. But in the modern mind, principal, and
interest within a limited rate, have so grown together, that we hardly
understand how it can ever have been pronounced unworthy of an
honorable citizen to lend money on interest; yet such is the declared
opinion of Aristotle, and other superior men of antiquity; while the
Roman Cato, the censor, went so far as to denounce the practice as
a heinous crime.[185] It was comprehended by them among the
worst of the tricks of trade,—and they held that all trade, or profit
derived from interchange, was unnatural, as being made by one man
at the expense of another: such pursuits, therefore, could not be
commended, though they might be tolerated to a certain extent as
matter of necessity, but they belonged essentially to an inferior order
of citizens.[186] What is remarkable in Greece is, that the antipathy of
a very early state of society against traders and money-lenders
lasted longer among the philosophers than among the mass of the
people,—it harmonized more with the social idéal of the former, than
with the practical instincts of the latter.
In a rude condition, such as that of the ancient Germans
described by Tacitus, loans on interest are unknown: habitually
careless of the future, the Germans were gratified both in giving and
receiving presents, but without any idea that they thereby either
imposed or contracted an obligation.[187] To a people in this state of
feeling, a loan on interest presents the repulsive idea of making
profit out of the distress of the borrower; moreover, it is worthy of
remark, that the first borrowers must have been for the most part
men driven to this necessity by the pressure of want, and
contracting debt as a desperate resource, without any fair prospect
of ability to repay: debt and famine run together, in the mind of the
poet Hesiod.[188] The borrower is, in this unhappy state, rather a
distressed man soliciting aid, than a solvent man capable of making
and fulfilling a contract; and if he cannot find a friend to make him a
free gift in the former character, he will not, under the latter
character, obtain a loan from a stranger, except by the promise of
exorbitant interest,[189] and by the fullest eventual power over his
person which he is in a condition to grant. In process of time a new
class of borrowers rise up, who demand money for temporary
convenience or profit, but with full prospect of repayment,—a
relation of lender and borrower quite different from that of the
earlier period, when it presented itself in the repulsive form of
misery on the one side, set against the prospect of very large profit
on the other. If the Germans of the time of Tacitus had looked to the
condition of the poor debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude under a
rich creditor, and swelling by hundreds the crowd of his attendants,
they would not have been disposed to regret their own ignorance of
the practice of money-lending.[190] How much the interest of money
was then regarded as an undue profit extorted from distress, is
powerfully illustrated by the old Jewish law; the Jew being permitted
to take interest from foreigners (whom the lawgiver did not think
himself obliged to protect), but not from his own countrymen.[191]
The Koran follows out this point of view consistently, and prohibits
the taking of interest altogether. In most other nations, laws have
been made to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome, especially, the
legal rate was successively lowered,—though it seems, as might
have been expected, that the restrictive ordinances were constantly
eluded. All such restrictions have been intended for the protection of
debtors; an effect which large experience proves them never to
produce, unless it be called protection to render the obtaining of
money on loan impracticable for the most distressed borrowers. But
there was another effect which they did tend to produce,—they
softened down the primitive antipathy against the practice generally,
and confined the odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed
legal rate.
In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their
tendency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not
unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising out of
the industrial progress of society, which gradually exhibited the
relation of lender and borrower in a light more reciprocally
beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the bystander.
[192]

At Athens, the more favorable point of view prevailed throughout

all the historical times,—the march of industry and commerce, under
the mitigated law which prevailed subsequently to Solon, had been
sufficient to bring it about at a very early period, and to suppress all
public antipathy against lenders at interest.[193] We may remark, too,
that this more equitable tone of opinion grew up spontaneously,
without any legal restriction on the rate of interest,—no such
restriction having ever been imposed, and the rate being expressly
declared free by a law ascribed to Solon himself.[194] The same may
probably be said of the communities of Greece generally,—at least
there is no information to make us suppose the contrary. But the
feeling against lending money at interest remained in the bosoms of
the philosophical men long after it had ceased to form a part of the
practical morality of the citizens, and long after it had ceased to be
justified by the appearances of the case as at first it really had been.
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,[195] and Plutarch, treat the practice as a
branch of that commercial and money-getting spirit which they are
anxious to discourage; and one consequence of this was, that they
were less disposed to contend strenuously for the inviolability of
existing money-contracts. The conservative feeling on this point was
stronger among the mass than among the philosophers. Plato even
complains of it as inconveniently preponderant,[196] and as arresting
the legislator in all comprehensive projects of reform. For the most
part, indeed, schemes of cancelling debts and redividing lands were
never thought of except by men of desperate and selfish ambition,
who made them stepping-stones to despotic power. Such men were
denounced alike by the practical sense of the community and by the
speculative thinkers; but when we turn to the case of the Spartan
king Agis the Third, who proposed a complete extinction of debts
and an equal redivision of the landed property of the state, not with
any selfish or personal views, but upon pure ideas of patriotism, well
or ill understood, and for the purpose of renovating the lost
ascendency of Sparta,—we find Plutarch[197] expressing the most
unqualified admiration of this young king and his projects, and
treating the opposition made to him as originating in no better
feelings than meanness and cupidity. The philosophical thinkers on
politics conceived—and to a great degree justly, as I shall show
hereafter—that the conditions of security, in the ancient world,
imposed upon the citizens generally the absolute necessity of
keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all times
personal hardship and discomfort; so that increase of wealth, on
account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly
introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If in
their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they
were willing to sanction great interference with preëxisting rights for
the purpose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard: and
the real security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the
conservative feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in
the opinions which superior minds imbibe from the philosophers.
Those conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian
democracy peculiarly deep-rooted: the mass of the Athenian people
identified inseparably the maintenance of property, in all its various
shapes, with that of their laws and constitution. And it is a
remarkable fact, that though the admiration entertained at Athens
for Solon, was universal, the principle of his seisachtheia, and of his
money-depreciation, was not only never imitated, but found the
strongest tacit reprobation; whereas at Rome, as well as in most of
the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that one debasement of
the coin succeeded another,—the temptation, of thus partially
eluding the pressure of financial embarrassments, proved, after one
successful trial, too strong to be resisted, and brought down the coin
by successive depreciations from the full pound of twelve ounces to
the standard of half an ounce. It is of some importance to take
notice of this fact, when we reflect how much “Grecian faith” has
been degraded by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in
pecuniary dealings.[198] The democracy of Athens,—and, indeed, the
cities of Greece generally, both oligarchies and democracies,—stands
far above the senate of Rome, and far above the modern kingdoms
of France and England, until comparatively recent times, in respect
of honest dealing with the coinage:[199] moreover, while there
occurred at Rome several political changes which brought about new
tables,[200] or at least a partial depreciation of contracts, no
phenomenon of the same kind ever happened at Athens, during the
three centuries between Solon and the end of the free working of
the democracy. Doubtless there were fraudulent debtors at Athens,
and the administration of private law, though it did not in any way
connive at their proceedings, was far too imperfect to repress them
as effectually as might have been wished. But the public sentiment
on the point was just and decided, and it may be asserted with
confidence, that a loan of money at Athens was quite as secure as it
ever was at any time or place of the ancient world,—in spite of the
great and important superiority of Rome with respect to the
accumulation of a body of authoritative legal precedent, the source
of what was ultimately shaped into the Roman jurisprudence. Among
the various causes of sedition or mischief in the Grecian
communities,[201] we hear little of the pressure of private debt.
By the measures of relief above described,[202] Solon had
accomplished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had healed
the prevailing discontents; and such was the confidence and
gratitude which he had inspired, that he was now called upon to
draw up a constitution and laws for the better working of the
government in future. His constitutional changes were great and
valuable: respecting his laws, what we hear is rather curious than
important.
It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, the
classification received in Attica was that of the four Ionic tribes,
comprising in one scale the phratries and gentes, and in another
scale the three trittyes and forty-eight naukraries,—while the
eupatridæ, seemingly a few specially respected gentes, and perhaps
a few distinguished families in all the gentes, had in their hands all
the powers of government. Solon introduced a new principle of
classification, called, in Greek, the timocratic principle. He distributed
all the citizens of the tribes, without any reference to their gentes or
phratries, into four classes, according to the amount of their
property, which he caused to be assessed and entered in a public
schedule. Those whose annual income was equal to five hundred
medimni of corn (about seven hundred imperial bushels) and
upwards,—one medimnus being considered equivalent to one
drachma in money,—he placed in the highest class; those who
received between three hundred and five hundred medimni, or
drachms, formed the second class; and those between two hundred
and three hundred, the third.[203] The fourth and most numerous
class comprised all those who did not possess land yielding a
produce equal to two hundred medimni. The first class, called
pentakosiomedimni, were alone eligible to the archonship and to all
commands: the second were called the knights or horsemen of the
state, as possessing enough to enable them to keep a horse and
perform military service in that capacity: the third class, called the
zeugitæ, formed the heavy-armed infantry, and were bound to
serve, each with his full panoply. Each of these three classes was
entered in the public schedule as possessed of a taxable capital,
calculated with a certain reference to his annual income, but in a
proportion diminishing according to the scale of that income,—and a
man paid taxes to the state according to the sum for which he stood
rated in the schedule; so that this direct taxation acted really like a
graduated income-tax. The ratable property of the citizens belonging
to the richest class, the pentakosiomedimnus, was calculated and
entered on the state-schedule at a sum of capital equal to twelve
times his annual income: that of the hippeus, or knight, at a sum
equal to ten times his annual income: that of the zeugite, at a sum
equal to five times his annual income. Thus a pentakosiomedimnus,
whose income was exactly five hundred drachms, the minimum
qualification of his class, stood rated in the schedule for a taxable
property of six thousand drachms, or one talent, being twelve times
his income,—if his annual income were one thousand drachms, he
would stand rated for twelve thousand drachms, or two talents,
being the same proportion of income to ratable capital. But when we
pass to the second class, or knights, the proportion of the two is
changed,—the knight possessing an income of just three hundred
drachms, or three hundred medimni, would stand rated for three
thousand drachms, or ten times his real income, and so in the same
proportion for any income above three hundred and below five
hundred. Again, in the third class. or below three hundred, the
proportion is a second time altered,—the zeugite possessing exactly
two hundred drachms of income, was rated upon a still lower
calculation, at one thousand drachms, or a sum equal to five times
his income; and all incomes of this class, between two hundred and
three hundred drachms, would in like manner be multiplied by five in
order to obtain the amount of ratable capital. Upon these respective
sums of scheduled capital, all direct taxation was levied: if the state
required one per cent, of direct tax, the poorest
pentakosiomedimnus would pay (upon six thousand drachms) sixty
drachms; the poorest hippeus would pay (upon three thousand
drachms) thirty; the poorest zeugite would pay (upon one thousand
drachms) ten drachms. And thus this mode of assessment would
operate like a graduated income-tax, looking at it in reference to the
three different classes,—but as an equal income-tax, looking at it in
reference to the different individuals comprised in one and the same
class.[204]
All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less
than two hundred medimni, or drachms, were placed in the fourth
class, and they must have constituted the large majority of the
community. They were not liable to any direct taxation, and,
perhaps, were not at first even entered upon the taxable schedule,
more especially as we do not know that any taxes were actually
levied upon this schedule during the Solonian times. It is said that
they were all called thêtes, but this appellation is not well sustained,
and cannot be admitted: the fourth compartment in the descending
scale was indeed termed the thetic census, because it contained all
the thêtes, and because most of its members were of that humble
description; but it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land
yielded to him a clear annual return of one hundred, one hundred
and twenty, one hundred and forty, or one hundred and eighty
drachms, could ever have been designated by that name.[205]
Such were the divisions in the political scale established by Solon,
called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights, honors, functions,
and liabilities of the citizens were measured out according to the
assessed property of each. Though the scale is stated as if nothing
but landed property were measured by it, yet we may rather
presume that property of other kinds was intended to be included,
since it served as the basis of every man’s liability to taxation. The
highest honors of the state,—that is, the places of the nine archons
annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of areopagus, into
which the past archons always entered,—perhaps also the posts of
prytanes of the naukrari,—were reserved for the first class: the poor
eupatrids became ineligible; while rich men, not eupatrids, were
admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were filled by the second
and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to military service, the
one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed soldiers on foot.
Moreover, the liturgies of the state, as they were called,—unpaid
functions, such as the trierarchy, chorêgy, gymnasiarchy, etc., which
entailed expense and trouble on the holder of them,—were
distributed in some way or other between the members of the three
classes, though we do not know how the distribution was made in
these early times. On the other hand, the members of the fourth or
lowest class were disqualified from holding any individual office of
dignity,—performed no liturgies, served in case of war only as light-
armed, or with a panoply provided by the state, and paid nothing to
the direct property-tax, or eisphora. It would be incorrect to say that
they paid no taxes; for indirect taxes, such as duties on imports, fell
upon them in common with the rest; and we must recollect that
these latter were, throughout a long period of Athenian history, in
steady operation, while the direct taxes were only levied on rare
occasions.
But though this fourth class, constituting the great numerical
majority of the free people, were shut out from individual office,
their collective importance was in another way greatly increased.
They were invested with the right of choosing the annual archons,
out of the class of pentakosiomedimni; and what was of more
importance still, the archons and the magistrates generally, after
their year of office, instead of being accountable to the senate of
areopagus, were made formally accountable to the public assembly
sitting in judgment upon their past conduct. They might be
impeached and called upon to defend themselves, punished in case
of misbehavior, and debarred from the usual honor of a seat in the
senate of areopagus.
Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone, without
aid or guidance, this accountability would have proved only nominal.
But Solon converted it into a reality by another new institution,
which will hereafter be found of great moment in the working out of
the Athenian democracy. He created the pro-bouleutic or pre-
considering senate, with intimate and especial reference to the
public assembly,—to prepare matters for its discussion, to convoke
and superintend its meetings, and to insure the execution of its
decrees. This senate, as first constituted by Solon, comprised four
hundred members, taken in equal proportions from the four tribes,—
not chosen by lot, as they will be found to be in the more advanced
stage of the democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way
as the archons then were,—persons of the fourth or poorest class of
the census, though contributing to elect, not being themselves
eligible.
 But while Solon thus created the new pre-considering senate,
identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he
manifested no jealousy of the preëxisting areopagitic senate: on the
contrary, he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision
over the execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the
censorial duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the citizens,
as well as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. He was
himself, as past archon, a member of this ancient senate, and he is
said to have contemplated that, by means of the two senates, the
state would be held fast, as it were with a double anchor, against all
shocks and storms.[206]
Such are the only new political institutions, apart from the laws
to be noticed presently, which there are grounds for ascribing to
Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what really belongs
to Solon and his age, from the Athenian constitution as afterwards
remodelled. It has been a practice common with many able
expositors of Grecian affairs, and followed partly, even by Dr.
Thirlwall,[207] to connect the name of Solon with the whole political
and judicial state of Athens as it stood between the age of Periklês
and that of Dêmosthenês,—the regulations of the senate of five
hundred, the numerous public dikasts or jurors taken by lot from the
people, as well as the body annually selected for law-revision, and
called nomothets, and the prosecution, called the graphê
paranomôn, open to be instituted against the proposer of any
measure illegal, unconstitutional, or dangerous. There is, indeed,
some countenance for this confusion between Solonian and post-
Solonian Athens, in the usage of the orators themselves; for
Dêmosthenês and Æschinês employ the name of Solon in a very
loose manner, and treat him as the author of institutions belonging
evidently to a later age for example, the striking and characteristic
oath of the heliastic jurors, which Demosthenês[208] ascribes to
Solon, proclaims itself in many ways as belonging to the age after
Kleisthenês, especially by the mention of the senate of five hundred,
and not of four hundred. Among the citizens who served as jurors or
dikasts, Solon was venerated generally as the author of the Athenian
laws; and the orator, therefore, might well employ his name for the
purpose of emphasis, without provoking any critical inquiry whether
the particular institution, which he happened to be then impressing
upon his audience, belonged really to Solon himself or to the
subsequent periods. Many of those institutions, which Dr. Thirlwall
mentions in conjunction with the name of Solon, are among the last
refinements and elaborations of the democratical mind of Athens,—
gradually prepared, doubtless, during the interval between
Kleisthenês and Periklês, but not brought into full operation until the
period of the latter (460-429 B. C.); for it is hardly possible to
conceive these numerous dikasteries and assemblies in regular,
frequent, and long-standing operation, without an assured payment
to the dikasts who composed them. Now such payment first began
to be made about the time of Periklês, if not by his actual
proposition;[209] and Dêmosthenês had good reason for contending
that, if it were suspended, the judicial as well as the administrative
system of Athens would at once fall to pieces.[210] And it would be a
marvel, such as nothing short of strong direct evidence would justify
us in believing, that in an age when even partial democracy was yet
untried, Solon should conceive the idea of such institutions: it would
be a marvel still greater, that the half-emancipated thêtes and small
proprietors, for whom he legislated,—yet trembling under the rod of
the eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective
business,—should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil
these ascendent functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens
in the days of Periklês,—full of the sentiment of force and actively
identifying themselves with the dignity of their community,—became
gradually competent, and not more than competent, to exercise with
effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and provided for the
periodical revision of his laws by establishing a nomothetic jury, or
dikastery, such as that which we find in operation during the time of
Dêmosthenês, would be at variance, in my judgment, with any
reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus says
that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn oaths that
they would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, quitted Athens
for that period, in order that he might not be compelled to rescind
them himself: Plutarch informs us that he gave to his laws force for
a century absolute.[211] Solon himself, and Drako before him, had
been lawgivers, evoked and empowered by the special emergency of
the times; the idea of a frequent revision of laws, by a body of lot-
selected dikasts, belongs to a far more advanced age, and could not
well have been present to the minds of either. The wooden rollers of
Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvirs,[212] were doubtless
intended as a permanent “fons omnis publici privatique juris.”
If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing
more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it
stood in the time of Periklês, can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. “I
gave to the people,” Solon says, in one of his short remaining
fragments,[213] “as much strength as sufficed for their needs,
without either enlarging or diminishing their dignity: for those too
who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I took care that
no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with the strong
shield cast over both parties, so as not to allow an unjust triumph to
either.” Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon bestowed upon the people
no greater measure of power than was barely necessary,[214]—to
elect their magistrates and to hold them to accountability: if the
people had had less than this, they could not have been expected to
remain tranquil,—they would have been in slavery and hostile to the
constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus speak, when he
describes the revolution subsequently operated by Kleisthenês—the
latter, he tells us, found “the Athenian people excluded from
everything.”[215] These passages seem positively to contradict the
supposition, in itself sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the author
of the peculiar democratical institutions of Athens, such as the
constant and numerous dikasts for judicial trials and revision of laws.
The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins
only with Kleisthenês, from the moment when that distinguished
Alkmæônid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted in
his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular
concessions the hearty coöperation of the multitude under very
dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his own statement as well
as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as much power as was
strictly needful, but no more,—Kleisthenês (to use the significant
phrase of Herodotus), “being vanquished in the party contest with
his rival, took the people into partnership.”[216] It was thus to the
interests of the weaker section, in a strife of contending nobles, that
the Athenian people owed their first admission to political
ascendency,—in part, at least, to this cause, though the proceedings
of Kleisthenês indicate a hearty and spontaneous popular sentiment.
But such constitutional admission of the people would not have been
so astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the course of public
events for the half-century after Kleisthenês had not been such as to
stimulate most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their
mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future
chapter those historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian
character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great
democratical impulse communicated by Kleisthenês: at present, it is
enough to remark that that impulse commences properly with
Kleisthenês, and not with Solon.
But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was
yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy; and
if the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, instead of
experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen
at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers, like Kylôn or
Peisistratus, the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during
the ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole
subsequent history of Greece would probably have taken a different
course. Solon left the essential powers of the state still in the hands
of the oligarchy, and the party combats—to be recounted hereafter—
between Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, thirty years after his
legislation, which ended in the despotism of Peisistratus, will appear
to be of the same purely oligarchical character as they had been
before he was appointed archon. But the oligarchy which he
established was very different from the unmitigated oligarchy which
he found, so teeming with oppression and so destitute of redress, as
his own poems testify.
 It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling property
and to the general mass, a locus standi against the eupatrids; he
enabled the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarized
them with the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful
exercise of a constitutional franchise. The new force, through which
this protection was carried into effect, was the public assembly
called heliæa,[217] regularized and armed with enlarged prerogatives,
and farther strengthened by its indispensable ally,—the pro-bouleutic
or pre-considering senate. Under the Solonian constitution, this force
was merely secondary and defensive, but after the renovation of
Kleisthenês, it became paramount and sovereign; it branched out
gradually into those numerous popular dikasteries which so
powerfully modified both public and private Athenian life, drew to
itself the undivided reverence and submission of the people, and by
degrees rendered the single magistracies essentially subordinate
functions. The popular assembly as constituted by Solon, appearing
in modified efficiency, and trained to the office of reviewing and
judging the general conduct of a past magistrate,—forms the
intermediate stage between the passive Homeric agora, and those
omnipotent assemblies and dikasteries which listened to Periklês or
Dêmosthenês. Compared with these last, it has in it but a faint
streak of democracy,—and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle, who
wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the
orators; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian
constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a concession
eminently democratical. To impose upon the eupatrid archon the
necessity of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-
accountability, by the rabble of freemen (such would be the phrase
in eupatrid society), would be a bitter humiliation to those among
whom it was first introduced; for we must recollect that this was the
most extensive scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in
Greece, and that despots and oligarchies shared between them at
that time the whole Grecian world. As it appears that Solon, while
constituting the popular assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had
no jealousy of the senate of areopagus, and indeed even enlarged
its powers,—we may infer that his grand object was, not to weaken
the oligarchy generally, but to improve the administration and to
repress the misconduct and irregularities of the individual archons;
and that too, not by diminishing their powers, but by making some
degree of popularity the condition both of their entry into office, and
of their safety or honor after it.
It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon
transferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dikastery;
these magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and
condemning without appeal,—not mere presidents of an assembled
jury, as they afterwards came to be during the next century.[218] For
the general exercise of such power they were accountable after their
year of office; and this accountability was the security against abuse,
—a very insufficient security, yet not wholly inoperative. It will be
seen, however, presently, that these archons, though strong to
coerce, and perhaps to oppress, small and poor men,—had no
means of keeping down rebellious nobles of their own rank, such as
Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, each with his armed followers.
When we compare the drawn swords of these ambitious
competitors, ending in the despotism of one of them, with the
vehement parliamentary strife between Themistoklês and Aristeidês
afterwards, peaceably decided by the vote of the sovereign people,
and never disturbing the public tranquillity,—we shall see that the
democracy of the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as
well as of progress, better than the Solonian constitution.
To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy
which followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the
progress of the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs. That
democracy was achieved by gradual steps, which will be hereafter
described: Dêmosthenês and Æschinês lived under it as a system
consummated and in full activity, when the stages of its previous
growth were no longer matter of exact memory; and the dikasts
then assembled in judgment were pleased to hear the constitution to
which they were attached identified with the names either of Solon,
or of Theseus, to which they were no less partial. Their inquisitive
contemporary Aristotle was not thus misled: but even the most
common-place Athenians of the century preceding would have
escaped the same delusion. For during the whole course of the
democratical movement from the Persian invasion down to the
Peloponnesian war, and especially during the changes proposed by
Periklês and Ephialtês, there was always a strenuous party of
resistance, who would not suffer the people to forget that they had
already forsaken, and were on the point of forsaking still more, the
orbit marked out by Solon. The illustrious Periklês underwent
innumerable attacks both from the orators in the assembly and from
the comic writers in the theatre; and among these sarcasms on the
political tendencies of the day, we are probably to number the
complaint breathed by the poet Kratinus, of the desuetude into
which both Solon and Drako had fallen. “I swear,[219] said he, in a
fragment of one of his comedies, by Solon and Drako, whose
wooden tablets (of laws) are now employed by people to roast their
barley.” The laws of Solon respecting penal offences, respecting
inheritance and adoption, respecting the private relations generally,
etc., remained for the most part in force; his quadripartite census
also continued, at least for financial purposes until the archonship of
Nausinikus in 377 B. C.; so that Cicero and others might be warranted
in affirming that his laws still prevailed at Athens: but his political
and judicial arrangements had undergone a revolution[220] not less
complete and memorable than the character and spirit of the
Athenian people generally. The choice, by way of lot, of archons and
other magistrates, and the distribution by lot of the general body of
dikasts or jurors into pannels for judicial business, may be decidedly
considered as not belonging to Solon, but adopted after the
revolution of Kleisthenês;[221] probably, the choice of senators by lot
also. The lot was a symptom of pronounced democratical spirit, such
as we must not seek in the Solonian institutions.
It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political
position of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them. The
four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch
that no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not
also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the new pro-
bouleutic or pre-considerate senate consisted of four hundred
members,—one hundred from each of the tribes: persons not
included in any gens or phratry could therefore have had no access
to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to ancient
custom, for the nine archons,—of course, also, for the senate of
areopagus. So that there remained only the public assembly, in
which an Athenian not a member of these tribes could take part: yet
he was a citizen, since he could give his vote for archons and
senators, and could take part in the annual decision of their
accountability, besides being entitled to claim redress for wrong from
the archons in his own person,—while the alien could only do so
through the intervention of an avouching citizen, or prostatês. It
seems, therefore, that all persons not included in the four tribes,
whatever their grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in
respect to political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the
Solonian census. It has already been remarked that, even before the
time of Solon, the number of Athenians not included in the gentes or
phratries was probably considerable: it tended to become greater
and greater, since these bodies were close and unexpansive, while
the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite industrious settlers
from other parts of Greece to Athens. Such great and increasing
inequality of political privilege helps to explain the weakness of the
government in repelling the aggressions of Peisistratus, and exhibits
the importance of the revolution afterwards wrought by Kleisthenês,
when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old tribes, and
created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them.
In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of
the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without
information: nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution the
information, comparatively ample, which we possess respecting
these bodies under the later democracy.
The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and
triangular tablets, in the species of writing called boustrophêdon
(lines alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left,
like the course of the ploughman), and preserved first in the
acropolis, subsequently in the prytaneium. On the tablets, called
kyrbeis, were chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites
and sacrifices:[222] on the pillars, or rollers, of which there were at
least sixteen, were placed the regulations respecting matters
profane. So small are the fragments which have come down to us,
and so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators, which
belongs really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to
form any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or
to discover by what general principles or purposes he was guided.
He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting
the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the
religious feelings of the people. The laws of Drako on this subject
therefore remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch,
they were altogether abrogated:[223] there is, however, room for
supposing, that the repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this
biographer represents.
The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon all the
great departments of human interest and duty. We find regulations
political and religious, public and private, civil and criminal,
commercial, agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. Solon
provides punishment for crimes, restricts the profession and status
of the citizen, prescribes detailed rules for marriage as well as for
burial, for the common use of springs and wells, and for the mutual
interest of conterminous farmers in planting or hedging their
properties. As far as we can judge, from the imperfect manner in
which his laws come before us, there does not seem to have been
any attempt at a systematic order or classification. Some of them
are mere general and vague directions, while others again run into
the extreme of speciality.
By far the most important of all was the amendment of the law
of debtor and creditor which has already been adverted to, and the
abolition of the power of fathers and brothers to sell their daughters
and sisters into slavery. The prohibition of all contracts on the
security of the body, was itself sufficient to produce a vast
improvement in the character and condition of the poorer
population,—a result which seems to have been so sensibly obtained
from the legislation of Solon, that Boeckh and some other eminent
authors suppose him to have abolished villenage and conferred upon
the poor tenants a property in their lands, annulling the seignorial
rights of the landlord. But this opinion rests upon no positive
evidence, nor are we warranted in ascribing to him any stronger
measure in reference to the land, than the annulment of the
previous mortgages.[224]
The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting
exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce of the
Attic soil, except olive-oil alone, and the sanction employed to
enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustration of
the ideas of the time;—the archon was bound, on pain of forfeiting
one hundred drachms, to pronounce solemn curses against every
offender.[225] We are probably to take this prohibition in conjunction
with other objects said to have been contemplated by Solon,
especially the encouragement of artisans and manufacturers at
Athens. Observing, we are told, that many new emigrants were just
then flocking into Attica to seek an establishment, in consequence of
its greater security, he was anxious to turn them rather to
manufacturing industry than to the cultivation of a soil naturally
poor.[226] He forbade the granting of citizenship to any emigrants,
except such as had quitted irrevocably their former abodes, and
come to Athens for the purpose of carrying on some industrious
profession; and in order to prevent idleness, he directed the senate
of areopagus to keep watch over the lives of the citizens generally,
and punish every one who had no course of regular labor to support
him. If a father had not taught his son some art or profession, Solon
relieved the son from all obligation to maintain him in his old age.
And it was to encourage the multiplication of these artisans, that he
insured, or sought to insure, to the residents in Attica a monopoly of
all its landed produce except olive-oil, which was raised in
abundance more than sufficient for their wants. It was his wish that
the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting the
produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land.[227]
This commercial prohibition is founded on principles substantially
similar to those which were acted upon in the early history of
England, with reference both to corn and to wool, and in other
European countries also. In so far as it was at all operative, it tended
to lessen the total quantity of produce raised upon the soil of Attica,
and thus to keep the price of it from rising,—a purpose less
objectionable—if we assume that the legislator is to interfere at all—
than that of our late Corn Laws, which were destined to prevent the
price of grain from falling. But the law of Solon must have been
altogether inoperative, in reference to the great articles of human
subsistence; for Attica imported, both largely and constantly, grain
and salt provisions,—probably, also, wool and flax for the spinning
and weaving of the women, and certainly timber for building.
Whether the law was ever enforced with reference to figs and honey,
may well be doubted; at least these productions of Attica were in
after-times generally consumed and celebrated throughout Greece.
Probably also, in the time of Solon, the silver-mines of Laureium had
hardly begun to be worked: these afterwards became highly
productive, and furnished to Athens a commodity for foreign
payments not less convenient than lucrative.[228]
It is interesting to notice the anxiety, both of Solon and of Drako,
to enforce among their fellow-citizens industrious and self-
maintaining habits;[229] and we shall find the same sentiment
proclaimed by Periklês, at the time when Athenian power was at its
maximum. Nor ought we to pass over this early manifestation in
Attica, of an opinion equitable and tolerant towards sedentary
industry, which in most other parts of Greece was regarded as
comparatively dishonorable. The general tone of Grecian sentiment
recognized no occupations as perfectly worthy of a free citizen
except arms, agriculture, and athletic and musical exercises; and the
proceedings of the Spartans, who kept aloof even from agriculture,
and left it to their Helots, were admired, though they could not be
copied throughout most part of the Hellenic world. Even minds like
Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon concurred to a considerable extent in
this feeling, which they justified on the ground that the sedentary
life and unceasing house-work of the artisan was inconsistent with
military aptitude: the town-occupations are usually described by a
word which carries with it contemptuous ideas, and though
recognized as indispensable to the existence of the city, are held
suitable only for an inferior and semi-privileged order of citizens.
This, the received sentiment among Greeks, as well as foreigners,
found a strong and growing opposition at Athens, as I have already
said,—corroborated also by a similar feeling at Corinth.[230] The
trade of Corinth, as well as of Chalkis in Eubœa, was extensive, at a
time when that of Athens had scarce any existence. But while the
despotism of Periander can hardly have failed to operate as a
discouragement to industry at Corinth, the contemporaneous
legislation of Solon provided for traders and artisans a new home at
Athens, giving the first encouragement to that numerous town-
population both in the city and in the Peiræeus, which we find
actually residing there in the succeeding century. The multiplication
of such town-residents, both citizens and metics, or non-freemen,
was a capital fact in the onward march of Athens, since it
determined not merely the extension of her trade, but also the
preëminence of her naval force,—and thus, as a farther
consequence, lent extraordinary vigor to her democratical
government. It seems, moreover, to have been a departure from the
primitive temper of Atticism, which tended both to cantonal
residence and rural occupation. We have, therefore, the greater
interest in noting the first mention of it as a consequence of the
Solonian legislation.
To Solon is first owing the admission of a power of testamentary
bequest at Athens, in all cases in which a man had no legitimate
children. According to the preëxisting custom, we may rather
presume that if a deceased person left neither children nor blood
relations, his property descended, as at Rome, to his gens and
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