Implosives in Bantu A80? The case of Gyeli

Implosive consonants in Bantu A80 languages are widely attested in the litera-
ture. The status that specific authors assign to them, however, differ significantly,
ranging from mere phonetic contrasts to phonemic status or even absence in cer-
tain languages. Given this variety of language analyses, along with a controversy
about necessary and sufficient features of implosive sounds, this paper aims at re-
assessing the range of implosives and non-implosives within A80 and especially
Gyeli (A801). I show that though implosives are expected in Gyeli from previous
literature, these sounds are better described as pre-glottalized stops with a rela-
tively long prevoicing time. That raises the question whether this analysis might
be more appropriate for other A80 languages as well. While this paper cannot pro-
vide any conclusive answer on the latter question, it hopes to raise awareness of
the methodological problems associated with the present description of A80 im-
plosives, encouraging a systematic re-evaluation of the data. It also encourages a
discussion on how the general fieldworker should go about describing implosive(-
like) sounds.