The Evolution of Noun Prefixes in West-Coastal Bantu Languages of Gabon

This study offers a detailed comparative analysis of the reflexes of Proto-Bantu noun class prefixes within nine Gabonese languages belonging to the B50, B60, and B70 groups of Guthrie’s referential inventory of the Bantu languages. Genealogically speaking, all of them are part of the Kwilu-Ngounie subclade of the Bantu family’s West-Coastal Bantu branch. Starting out from a robust dataset comprising over 4000 lexical items collected through fieldwork and existing descriptions, the Comparative Method is used to distinguish changes in noun class morphology due to regular sound shifts from those emerging from analogical reanalysis and levelling. The comparative study shows a systematic reduction and reorganization of the inherited Proto-Bantu noun class system, notably the loss of classes 12/13 and 19 across all languages, variable retention and loss of classes 7/8 and 11, and complex patterns of reshuffling involving classes 5, 9/10, and 1/2. Key innovations, potentially reinforcing lexicon-based hypotheses of phylogenetic subgrouping within Kwilu-Ngounie, include the development of a class 7 allomorphy conditioned by stem-initial segments in the B50 languages and the emergence of vocalic prefixes restricted to the B60 and B70 languages.