PI-Effects in South Bantu: Consonant Changes Due to a Preceding Front Close Vowel

An important set of sound changes affected the South Bantu languages through the impact of front vowels on following consonants, most notably under the form of the class 5 nominal prefix *i-. These consonant changes are well known, but their extent has been underestimated, as the substantial data in this paper show. There is not even a standard name for these changes, which are here called “Preceding-I effects”. This paper offers a detailed study of the relevant conditioning factor, calling attention to the understudied category of hiatus resolution in the history of Bantu languages. Although the reflexes in individual languages vary and levelling often reduced the number of surviving examples, indications of systematic PI-effects in all the subgroups of the South Bantu branch contrast with other Bantu branches and suggest a common conditioning factor was present in Proto-South-Bantu.