ABSTRACT
to a syllable – even intervocalically in a sequence such as [ … aŋga … ] – can be found in the language games of a language like Gbaya (Monino and Roulon 1972: 110-11). Also with respect to nasalisation, one observes in a language like Mbum (Hagège 1970: 62) that if there are two vowels in a word, then either both will be nasal or neither will be nasal – different values for the two vowels are not attested. Also with respect to Mbum, Hagège notes (Hagège 1970: 48, 54) that glides ([y, w]) are in complementary distribution with their corresponding vowels: glides appear initially before a vowel as well as intervocalically, while the vowels appear elsewhere (e.g. mbòì ‘follow’; mbóyà ‘to follow’). A final general point can be made about the distribution of consonant phonemes. One typically observes that the full range of contrasts is possible only in initial position; only a restricted inventory may appear in intervocalic positions and an even more limited set is all that is possible in final position. To close this discussion, a few brief comments will be made about the syntactic
