10.6092/issn.2785-0943/17231
With more than seventy named languages, and many more locally distinctive varieties, the Cameroonian Grassfields are known for their impressive linguistic diversity. At the same time, the languages of the Grassfields also show a considerable degree of structural homogeneity and lexical similarity which is suggestive of both genealogical relatedness and prolonged processes of contact-induced convergence. However, fine-grained comparative analyses reveal puzzling situations of similarities and differences among neighboring languages and varieties. Often left unaddressed or viewed as “irregularities”, these cases might in fact provide insights into low-level language dynamics that have contributed significantly to the development of the regional linguistic configuration. In this paper, we focus on two such cases involving noun classes and tense-aspect marking and propose a model of language change based on a notion that we term the social semiosis layer, which is viewed as a specific part of a linguistic feature pool.  When paired with the existing notion of neighbor opposition, it can account for situations where there is evidence that specific forms have been deliberately manipulated to create salient distinctions among varieties in a given local sociolinguistic context.
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Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering? Feature pools, social semiosis, and intentional language change in the Cameroonian Grassfields
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<p><span data-contrast="auto">Wickham, Hadley. 2016. </span><em><span data-contrast="auto">ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis</span></em><span data-contrast="auto">. New York: Springer.</span><span data-ccp-props="{&quot;335551550&quot;:6,&quot;335551620&quot;:6,&quot;335559685&quot;:284,&quot;335559991&quot;:284}">&nbsp;</span></p>
Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering? Feature pools, social semiosis, and intentional language change in the Cameroonian Grassfields
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           Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125                    ISSN 2785-0943



       Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?
  Feature pools, social semiosis, and intentional language
                change in the Cameroonian Grassfields

                              PIERPAOLO DI CARLO, JEFF GOOD
                                          UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO




                    Submitted: 16/06/2023               Revised version: 09/10/2023
                       Accepted: 09/10/2023                  Published: 30/11/2023


                   Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (The authors
                   remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article).




                                                   Abstract
With more than seventy named languages, and many more locally distinctive varieties, the
Cameroonian Grassfields are known for their impressive linguistic diversity. At the same time,
the languages of the Grassfields also show a considerable degree of structural homogeneity
and lexical similarity which is suggestive of both genealogical relatedness and prolonged
processes of contact-induced convergence. However, fine-grained comparative analyses
reveal puzzling situations of similarities and differences among neighboring languages and
varieties. Often left unaddressed or viewed as “irregularities”, these cases might in fact
provide insights into low-level language dynamics that have contributed significantly to the
development of the regional linguistic configuration. In this paper, we focus on two such
cases involving noun classes and tense-aspect marking and propose a model of language
change based on a notion that we term the social semiosis layer, which is viewed as a specific
part of a linguistic feature pool. When paired with the existing notion of neighbor opposition,
it can account for situations where there is evidence that specific forms have been deliberately
manipulated to create salient distinctions among varieties in a given local sociolinguistic
context.


Keywords: contact-induced change; deliberate change; neighbor opposition; Cameroonian
Grassfields; noun classes; tense-aspect marking




https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2785-0943/17231                                                                            72
Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


1. Language change in highly multilingual contexts


Two basic patterns have shaped the study of language change: genealogical
inheritance (i.e., tree-like change) and areal diffusion (i.e., wave-like change). These
linguistic patterns are implicitly or explicitly seen as co-occurring with identifiable
community events (Ross 1997). For example, differentiation between related
languages may take place through geographic or social separation between two
populations which previously shared a common language, or the spread of features
of a language among neighboring languages may result from an increased influence
or prestige that one community exerts on another community. Events like these are
commonly invoked (or even simply presupposed) in linguistic investigations of
genealogical relationships and contact-induced language change, respectively.
   Of course, this dichotomous approach to modeling processes of change represents
a rather extreme simplification of a more complex reality. On the one hand, the events
that are potentially associated with language change are extremely diverse in nature.
On the other hand, these models do not account for the role of linguistic differences
themselves in defining the structure of communities and their role in creating a
linguistic ecology that constrains the possible trajectories of change. The traditional
two-way model of change rests on an assumption that the default social situation in
which language change takes place is one where there is some kind of “ethnic”
continuity in the composition of a language community over time. In such a context,
change passively happens to a language as a result of larger cultural forces, e.g., a split
of one community into two new ethnic groups or a change in prestige relations among
two neighboring groups. Perhaps the most obvious way in which this model
oversimplifies historical reality relates to the processes through which communities
incorporate foreign populations whose patterns of shift may leave an impact on the
speech practices of the community which they have joined (see, e.g., Thomason &
Kaufman 1988: 89).
   One possible response to such complications would be to suggest that the
traditional approach to language change is basically correct—or at least highly
useful—even if it needs to be amended to handle the details of certain attested
patterns of change. Our impression is that this is, in fact, the dominant response, as
evidenced, for example, by the accounts of change provided in commonly used
historical linguistics textbooks (see, e.g., Campbell 2013: Ch. 7), which continue to
give prominence to the traditional split between the notions of tree-like and wave-



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Di Carlo & Good                                         Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


like diversification. More striking is the increasing adoption of phylogenetic models
to analyze language change which are based on the assumption that it can be usefully
analogized to evolutionary change in biology (Dunn 2015). In these models,
languages stand in for organisms and change can be represented through the use of
network representations depicting lateral (i.e., contact) relationships alongside descent
(i.e., genealogical relationships). A key assumption of work of this kind is that the
ways that change operates in populations of language communities maps well onto
models designed for the study of biological evolution.
     In this paper, however, based on our observations of patterns of linguistic
diversification and change in the Cameroonian Grassfields, along with our knowledge
of the sociolinguistic features and the social formation dynamics of its communities,
we will propose a radically different additional mechanism of change, which builds
on the notion of the social semiosis layer (henceforth semiosis layer) and is based on
the idea that, at least in this part of the world, teleological (i.e., deliberate, goal-
oriented) processes are more common in language change than traditional approaches
would suggest.1 In particular, we will argue that the social structure of these
communities enables—and, under the right conditions, encourages—high status
individuals to initiate processes of language change for social ends. In making these
claims, we do not mean to supplant traditional approaches but, rather, to complement
them as a step towards developing models of change that are appropriate for small-
scale multilingual societies of the sort that have historically characterized the
Grassfields. We believe that the sociolinguistic context of this region, and the
complications that its patterns of linguistic diversity pose for traditional models of
change, provide an opportunity to explore new models that will help us more fully
understand the dynamics of language evolution.
     We begin by providing a general overview of the comparative linguistic situation
of the northern Cameroonian Grassfields in Section 2. In Section 3, we build on
existing work in language evolution to develop the notion of the semiosis layer. In
Section 4 we summarize the group formation dynamics that are attested in the history
of the Grassfields societies in order to situate our proposals regarding language


1
    In the theoretical literature on language change, the meaning of the term “teleological change”
fluctuates between, on the one hand, planned and conscious change on the part of the speakers (see,
e.g., Keller 1994: 139) and, on the other, unplanned and unconscious but functional change that is due
to systemic pressures on speakers (like, e.g., restoring symmetry in a phonological system, cf. Martinet
1952). The meaning we intend in this paper is the former.


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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


change in their sociolinguistic context. In Section 5, we apply the notion of the
semiosis layer to the analysis of a pattern of noun class variation in the northern
Grassfields. In Section 6, we look at variation in tense-aspect marking in one region
of the Grassfields from the perspective of the semiosis layer. Concluding remarks are
provided in Section 7.


2. The diversity of the Cameroonian Grassfields


The linguistic situation of the Cameroonian Grassfields strongly informs the
arguments made in this paper. This region roughly corresponds to the West and
North West Regions of Cameroon, and it is one of the most linguistically dense areas
of Sub-Saharan Africa as explicitly observed at least as early as Stallcup (1980). In an
area roughly the size of Belgium, one finds dozens of southern Bantoid languages,
with speaker populations ranging from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.2
Moreover, underlying this diversity of languages is a much larger number of locally
distinctive varieties (see, e.g., Good 2013 on the Lower Fungom region of the
Grassfields for relevant discussion).
     There is a significant amount of shared lexicon among the languages of the region,
both in terms of basic vocabulary and with respect to lexical innovations in
comparison with related languages spoken outside of the region. Even though regular
correspondences are overall difficult to find, these lexical similarities set the core
group of languages occupying the region, referred to as the Grassfields group, apart
from the rest of the southern Bantoid languages, including Bantu. By contrast, the
noun class systems of certain subgroups of Grassfields languages differ from each
other across some key features, for instance, in showing a merger of Classes 6 and 6a,
the presence of a nasal in the prefixes of noun Classes 1, 3, 9, and 10, and the
generalization of low tones on all the noun class prefixes (cf., e.g., Watters 2003).
Figure 1, based on Warnier (1979), aims to graphically represent the surprising
contrast between the lexical and grammatical evidence in the Grassfields languages.
From a lexical perspective, the Western Grassfields group and the Mbam-Nkam group
(also referred to as Eastern Grassfields) appear to belong together as part of a
Grassfields subgroup. However, from the perspective of their noun class systems, the


2
    See Blench (2014) for an overview of the Bantoid languages.


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Di Carlo & Good                                        Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


Mbam-Nkam languages pattern with many northwestern Bantu languages, while the
Western Grassfields languages pattern with certain other Bantu languages as well as
other languages spoken in nearby areas.




 Figure 1: Schematic genealogical trees of Grassfields languages (adapted from Warnier 1979: 418)
                    based on lexical data (left); and noun class patterns (right).


Warnier (1979) is a particularly instructive attempt to address the difficulties that
linguists still face in analyzing language change in the Grassfields region. He quite
clearly sets out the hypotheses to explain the lack of convergence between the lexical
and grammatical patterns using the basic conceptual toolkit discussed in Section 1.
This involves three possible accounts: (i) language-internal change as captured by the
tree-based model, (ii) contact between languages resulting in grammatical diffusion,
or (iii) actual migration of people speaking different languages followed by
relexification of languages of the earlier inhabitants. He ultimately concludes that the
intense contact among multilingual Grassfields people makes it hard to determine
what the right historical account is.
  In part due to the linguistic diversity of the Grassfields and nearby parts of Nigeria,
Greenberg (1972) suggested that this general area was the homeland for the Bantu
languages before they spread south and east to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa—a
proposal that continues to be accepted up to this day (e.g., Bostoen 2020) (though
see Idiatov & Van de Velde 2021: 98 for a recently proposed alternative location). His
suggestion was based on a logical argument regarding linguistic geography where it
is assumed that the greater time depth of the presence of a language group in its



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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


homeland will be correlated with greater diversification in that region, whether of
languages or dialects. However, this is not the only possible way in which such a
diversity can come into being. As discussed in Di Carlo & Good (2014: 237, fn. 5),
rather than seeing the linguistic diversity of the Grassfields as driven primarily by
fragmentation (i.e., the breaking up of a former unity) (see Dalby 1970: 163), detailed
comparative investigation informed by ethnographic and historical data suggests that
the region’s cultures were instead characterized by a pressure towards “linguistic
singularity” (Fowler & Zeitlyn 1996: 1), and, in particular, traditional political
independence has required a community to be associated with a speech variety that
is seen as distinctive in the local sociolinguistic space (i.e., each political unit should
have its own “language”). From this perspective, whether or not the Grassfields were
part of the Bantu homeland, its current linguistic diversity cannot be seen as good
evidence of this since we cannot know how much of this diversity is due to ancient
patterns of diversification rather than shallower historical processes linked to
contemporary socio-political formations.
   Our own observations of the linguistic diversity of this region, and, in particular,
the linguistic diversity of a small area of the northern Grassfields known as Lower
Fungom, which has seen particularly detailed investigation in recent years, suggests,
in fact, that linguistic diversification is not solely, or even primarily, due to a kind of
asocial historical drift or patterns of random change that may be retroactively linked
to specific communities. Rather, we will argue here that it is also, at least in part, the
product of conscious or semi-conscious efforts of linguistic convergence and
divergence. These linguistic processes parallel Fowler & Zeitlyn’s (1996: 1)
characterization of Grassfields’ culture more generally as being built out of “the
seemingly idiosyncratic parcelling up in individual polities of elements from a
common core of cultural forms and practices,” and it is this kind of observation, in
particular, which has motivated us to develop the notion of the semiosis layer below
in Section 3. The linguistic analogs to these cultural processes have been considered
in some previous work, such as Mve et al. 2019’s discussion of the role of linguistic
esoterogeny (see Thurston 1989) in the history of some of Lower Fungom’s languages
as well as Good (to appear), where insights of Kopytoff (1987) were extended to the
realm of language change.




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Di Carlo & Good                                   Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


3. Feature pool and the semiosis layer


3.1. The pool metaphor


Tree-based and wave-based models of change are implicitly based on approaches that
model the structure of language communities in a way that posits ethnic continuity
to be the default situation. This extralinguistic assumption is intrinsically linked to a
second fundamental linguistic assumption of these models that entire languages are
the units which evolve during the course of language change. On this view, splits in
a tree are associated with the fission of a community into multiple new ethnic groups,
and wave-like change involves the borrowing or transfer of linguistic patterns across
pre-existing groups and their associated languages. Crucially, the size of foreign
linguistic elements that are incorporated into the community in these approaches is
assumed to be relatively small compared to the overall structure of the community’s
language as a whole, and the frequency of such events of incorporation is assumed to
generally be relatively low.
  For reasons that will become clear in the following sections, these views are
problematic for the study of language change in the Grassfields. However, there is
already another well-known group of languages where it has been established that
these views of the dynamics of group formation and language change are unable to
capture the events that co-occurred with the formation of a language community,
namely creoles, and we build on Mufwene’s (2001) work on creole formation here.
He reconstructs the emergence of creoles as being characterized by two related events
that have both linguistic and social reflexes. The first is the koinéization of the lexifier
language caused by the mixing of speakers of different varieties of the same lexifier.
This is depicted in Figure 2, which is adapted from Mufwene (2001: 4). The second
involves the contact between the varieties undergoing koinéization and the substrate
languages that contributed to the formation of the creole. This is depicted in Figure
3, which is adapted from Mufwene (2001: 5). A key element of his approach is the
notion of a feature pool, where different lexical and grammatical features of the
contributing languages are brought together in the social space of the newly forming
community and are drawn upon in the creation of a new variety.




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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125




   Figure 2: Representation of a prototypical koinéization process (adapted from Mufwene 2001).
Increased interaction among speakers of different varieties of a language (the three circles at the top
    of the figure) creates a feature pool (the middle oval) where features of the different varieties
 associated with the same or similar grammatical functions compete with each other. The result (the
circle at the bottom) represents one possible way of reassembling the material from the feature pool
                                          into a new variety.




Figure 3: Representation of the process of creole formation (adapted from Mufwene 2001). Varieties
    of different historical origins (represented by different shapes) contribute to the feature pool
               resulting in the formation of a new language (also given its own shape).




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Di Carlo & Good                                  Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


The notion of feature pool shifts the focus away from languages and instead targets
language features or linguistic items, i.e., “any piece of structure that can be
independently learned and therefore transmitted from one speaker to another, or from
one language to another” (Nettle 1999: 5) as the central units in processes of change.
Under this model, the new lexicogrammatical codes that emerge from either
koinéization or creolization cannot be directly associated with any single variety that
contributed to the contact situation. From this perspective, one might view the codes
that we generally refer to as languages as comprising sets of linguistic items (or
features) enjoying a certain diachronic continuity.
  This leads us back to the discussion in Section 2 about the apparent incongruence
between lexical and grammatical evidence with respect to the classification of the
Grassfields languages. We believe that a feature-based, rather than a language-based,
approach should be seriously considered in this context since it “allows us to capture
all types of linguistic change in a single framework” (Nettle 1999: 8). In Section 3.2,
we develop an extension to the feature pool approach to language change that we
think is suitable for the situation seen in the Grassfields.


3.2. The semiosis layer model and neighbor-bias selection


3.2.1 Defining the semiosis layer


Like other notions built on the pool metaphor—e.g., the linguistic pool (Nettle 1999)
or the meme pool (Dawkins 1976)—Mufwene’s feature pool is conceptualized as an
undifferentiated pool of linguistic features, a term encompassing any kind of linguistic
element including lexical items, phones and phonemes, morphological and syntactic
constructions, formulaic expressions, etc. The pool metaphor has the advantage of
detaching individual features from languages, thus allowing more fine-grained and
nuanced analyses of change processes, but it specifies nothing regarding which
features may be more likely to be selected as norms in a newly emerging variety
(though see Matras 2009: 310–312 for relevant considerations). We coin the term
semiosis layer as a way of complementing the feature pool notion to partly fill this
gap, with a focus on the interaction between feature selection and social meaning.
  As defined here, the semiosis layer is the subset of linguistic items present in a
feature pool that, in a particular sociolinguistic situation, are more likely to be
leveraged by a language community in order to respond to neighbor-bias pressures,


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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


i.e., ideological pressures to either imitate or be distinctive from other languages
present within the local linguistic ecology. We use this notion here to generalize on
Larsen’s (1917) term naboopposition (‘neighbor opposition’), which focuses on the
pressure to be distinctive only (see Section 3.2.2 for further discussion). The items
present in a feature pool are accessible to multilingual individuals through their
linguistic repertoires, but some of them will be more salient than others in their
linguistic and sociolinguistic knowledge with respect to which features are associated
with which groups and the relationships that different language communities have to
one another. The latter subset of items forms what we call here the semiosis layer.
For reasons that will become clear in the following, we opt for the term semiosis, i.e.,
the action of producing signs, in order to stress that our view of the types of change
that are connected to the semiosis layer are not evolutionary in the sense of being the
consequence of cumulative, invisible hand processes where individual intentions
progressively contribute to a general but unplanned change (Keller 1994: 139–141).
Rather, they are teleological—i.e., made consciously for a purpose—and, therefore,
entail an active engagement in producing (social) meaning on the part of a community
or some influential components thereof.
   In the remainder of this section, we will first contextualize change that draws on
the semiosis layer within language change processes in general and, then, we will
provide some further clarifications as to how we think it is possible to detect semiosis
layer change.


3.2.2. Contextualizing semiosis layer change


In Table 1, we situate language change that draws on the semiosis layer with respect
to well-known models of change in the literature. The table classifies such models
across two broad dimensions: (i) whether they primarily apply within monolingual or
multilingual contexts (at least from an idealized perspective) and (ii) the nature of
the process of selection through which variants become conventionalized within a
variety. The first type of selection included in the table is labeled functional selection,
which we use as a broad cover term for changes which are linked to the broad
communicative function of language, and we intend it to encompass the kinds of
changes that have been the focus of most work in historical linguistics (e.g., regular
sound change, analogical leveling, grammaticalization, etc.). The second is labeled
social selection, and this is intended to cover changes that impact a language due to



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Di Carlo & Good                                           Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


the social relationships among communities associated with different varieties, such
as prestige hierarchies or other kinds of culturally significant categories. The third
class of selection, which is the one that is central to this paper, is what we termed
neighbor-bias in Section 3.2.1. Unlike the other kinds of selection, neighbor-bias
selection involves the direct comparison of lexicogrammatical codes themselves by
individuals or groups to either achieve convergence or divergence of the codes.
Whereas social selection involves changes to the codes as a secondary outcome that
reflects non-linguistic social relations, this is the intended primary outcome in
neighbor-bias selection. The presentation in Table 1 is provided primarily to help
contrast change that we model via the semiosis layer with other kinds of change
rather than being intended to serve as a complete model of language change.


                  Functional selection        Social selection            Neighbor-bias

  Monolingual     Drift                       Sociolinguistic             State-based language
                                              variation                   engineering

  Multilingual    Sprachbund-like             Feature pool change,        Lexical divergence without
                  change, borrowing to        borrowing resulting in      grammatical divergence,
                  fill a lexical gap          lexical replacement         esoterogeny, contact-
                                                                          induced stability, semiosis
                                                                          layer change


    Table 1: Situating neighbor-bias change with respect to other kinds of change by classifying
  processes of change across two dimensions involving monolingual communities and multilingual
                          communities and different types of variant selection.


As indicated in Table 1, we see well-known patterns of change such as drift (see Joseph
2013 for discussion), the grammatical convergence found in large Sprachbund areas,
and lexical borrowing to fill gaps (e.g., a term for an item being newly introduced to
a society) as the result of functional selection. Social selection encompasses
sociolinguistic variation within a society that can be tied to specific social categories
(e.g., race, class, etc.) as well as feature pool change of the sort modeled by Mufwene
(2001) and discussed in Section 3.1. It would also include borrowing in cases where
a word from one language replaces an existing word in another for social reasons
(e.g., perceived differences in social prestige across language communities).




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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


     In addition to our proposed category of semiosis layer change developed in this
paper, we have identified several other types of change that we believe can be
classified as involving neighbor-bias selection. The first of these, in a monolingual
context, is state-based language engineering where explicit efforts are made to create
a national variety that is clearly distinct from the languages associated with any other
state. In fact, the outcomes of state-based language engineering can be accounted for
in terms of a semiosis layer, though we do not apply that label to them here. Take for
instance the case of the re-introduction of the feminine in Nynorsk (norw1262; Indo-
European, Germanic).3 The feminine had disappeared in Swedish (swed1254; Indo-
European, Germanic), Danish (dani1285; Indo-European, Germanic), and in the
Danish-influenced form of Norwegian that was the official language of Norway from
the 16th to the 19th centuries (Hagège 2005: 110). Motivated by nationalist claims,
nineteenth century Norwegian intellectuals reintroduced the feminine as a feature of
the newly emerging Nynorsk (Neo-Norwegian) taking it from southwestern dialects
of Norwegian that had maintained it. This process is in line with the perspective
offered by the semiosis layer approach since (i) feminine forms were among the
available linguistic features that could be drawn in processes of change in the local
linguistic ecology and (ii) those involved in reintroducing it to the language
associated with Norway were aware that this would make Nynorsk distinctive from
other Scandinavian languages that it was in close contact with.
     In fact, practically all of the examples of language engineering discussed in Hagège
(1982, 2005) can be characterized in these terms. Such cases are normally not
addressed by historical linguists due to the perceived artificiality of the processes that
engendered them, and the fact that they seem particular to nation-states where the
power of political and intellectual elites, combined with diffusion of new forms via
mass-media and compulsory schooling, can create widespread norms on a scale which
would be impossible with other forms of social organization, such as those found in
traditional African societies, where language change is assumed to have been natural
rather than artificial. This probably accounts for the absence of this kind of perspective
in the study of “tribal” African languages. However, as we will see in the next section,


3
    To assist with the identification of the language varieties discussed in this paper, we include
Glottocodes as found in Glottolog (Hammarström et al. 2023) but, for purposes of presentation, we
include a more fine-grained classification for the languages of focus and use more widely accepted
classificatory labels than those proposed by Glottolog. However, we follow Glottolog for the other,
non-African languages cited.


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Di Carlo & Good                                  Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


in the small-scale societies of the Cameroonian Grassfields, where pressures for
cultural distinctiveness are comparable to those associated with nation-states, there
is evidence for processes analogous to state-based language engineering—i.e., what
one might call linguistic micro-engineering given the small-scale nature of these
societies—which we refer to under the heading of semiosis layer change here.
  Unlike all the other classes of change in Table 1, the mechanism of actuation in
neighbor-bias selection is explicitly teleological, i.e., the change is initiated for a
specific purpose, in this case a social purpose targeting inter-group distinctiveness. In
addition to the cases discussed in detail below, other cases that we are aware of where
neighbor-bias is an important factor in the dynamics of language evolution in small-
scale societies of the sort found in the Grassfields include the unexpectedly low levels
of shared vocabulary among neighboring languages sharing substantial parts of their
semantics and structure, as found in Vanuatu (François 2011) and the northwest
Amazon (Epps 2009, 2020). By being an especially consciously accessible part of
language, the lexicon is clearly the linguistic domain in which neighbor-bias
phenomena can be most readily observed, although they have also been found in
phonology (e.g., Gomez-Imbert 1999).
  Below, we will focus on apparent cases where neighbor-bias is manifested
morphologically in both affixes and function words. Morphological divergence
between related and neighboring languages has also been previously described in the
literature (see, e.g., Evans 2019 for an example of how variation in gender assignment
of body-part nouns was socially recategorized as shibboleths distinguishing Iwaidja
from Mawng, respectively iway1238 – Iwaidjan Proper, Central Iwaidjic – and
maun1240 – Iwaidjan Proper). Linguistic esoterogeny (see Thurston 1989), where
language change adds complexity to a language in ways that make it harder for
outsiders to learn would also be classified as an instance of neighbor-bias change in
this classificatory scheme.
  While we use the term neighbor-bias here as a cover term for both neighbor
opposition and neighbor attraction, all of the cases just discussed involve neighbor
opposition. We believe that this is, on the one hand, because it would be hard to
identify semiosis layer convergence from either shared retention or lack of change
from a purely practical perspective in cases where historical records are lacking and,
on the other hand, due to the fact that there is a general bias in linguistic investigation
to more readily notice cases of linguistic divergence rather than linguistic
convergence or maintenance of non-distinctiveness.


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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125




3.2.3 Composition of the semiosis layer


As discussed at the beginning of Section 3.2, a semiosis layer is a part of a feature
pool composed of linguistic items that, once certain linguistic and extralinguistic
premises are satisfied, are more likely to be leveraged by a language community in
order to respond to neighbor-bias pressures. We claim that what makes semiosis layer
change different from other neighbor-bias phenomena—such as contact-induced
stability (cf., e.g., Connell 2001; this volume) or divergence in the lexicon but not
grammar, as in Vanuatu (François 2011) or in the Vaupés region of the Amazon (Epps
2009) (see Table 1)—is that it cannot be readily ascribed to cumulative, invisible-
hand processes and instead is the result of conscious change initiated by some group
of influential community members whose speech practices spread rapidly in a
language community.4
     That being said, due to the fact that we do not have access to the mental state of
the individuals whose linguistic behavior initiated a change, either consciously or
unconsciously, a key question emanating from our proposals here is how we can
determine what characteristics differentiate semiosis layer items from the rest of the
linguistic items found in a multilingual feature pool and, on this basis, what kinds of
changes are good candidates for being classified as instances of semiosis layer change.
Since the semiosis layer is defined on the basis of a finalistic, teleological process, the
items that can or cannot be a part of it will depend on their relationship to social and
linguistic differences in the specific case under analysis. What we propose in (1), by
contrast, is an outline of some general properties of linguistic items that would make
them good candidates for the deliberate construction of linguistic similarity or



4
    As Evans (2019) points out, neighbor-bias selection in and of itself does not necessarily entail that
the speakers are always conscious agents of the change. For instance, psycholinguistic experimental
evidence (Ellison & Miceli 2017) suggests that bilinguals who are motivated to monitor their
production to respond in a particular language avoid vocabulary that is common to their two
languages—a phenomenon called “doppel avoidance”, where “doppel” is any item that is close in both
form and meaning in two languages regardless of the reasons for their resemblance—and that this
happens largely below their level of awareness. Low-level pressures like these could potentially lead
to neighbor opposition via lexical divergence across two languages that had previously been more
similar, but this would not necessarily mean that the change is teleological and, as a consequence, that
we are dealing with semiosis layer change.


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difference—i.e., having characteristics which we might generally expect of semiosis
layer items.


(1)


a.    Neighbor-bias potential
      In order to be considered effective at the level of semiosis layer change, linguistic
      items should be readily perceived by users as encoding social meaning of
      similarity or difference among languages used within a community. This kind of
      potential manifests in two, potentially interrelated characteristics: namely,
      inherent and frequency derived neighbor-bias potential.
        i.     Neighbor-bias potential is inherent in items that stand out for their
               perceived peculiarity. Phonological shibboleths (beginning with the
               biblical one) are cases in point. An example from the Lower Fungom
               area is the presence of pharyngealized vowels in Mundabli (mund1340;
               Niger-Congo, Yemne-Kimbi) but not in the otherwise extremely similar
               (and geographically very close) Mufu variety (mufu1234; Niger-Congo,
               Yemne-Kimbi) nor in any of the other languages of the northern
               Grassfields (Voll 2017: 41–43).
        ii.    Neighbor-bias potential is high in items that are high in frequency in
               usage and, therefore, likely to be noticed even in short exchanges. This
               could include specific morphemes and sets of covariant morphemes (like
               in patterns of agreement), sounds, content words, common expressions
               (such as greetings), or basic constructions such as agreement patterns
               (like, e.g., in the case of the variation in noun class assignment as
               shibboleths in Iwaidja and Mawng mentioned in Section 3.2.2, which
               surfaces in nominal and verbal agreement patterns, see Evans 2019:
               576). By targeting such items, a change would instantly become
               frequent in everyday speech and therefore effectively encode neighbor-
               bias.

b.    Straightforward acquisition
      For an item to be effectively employed in a process of semiosis layer change, it
      should quickly propagate through a language community in a small-scale society
      lacking the coercive forces of the state. This implies that it needs to be readily



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       acquirable in the context of community members’ existing linguistic knowledge.
       Among the characteristics that can facilitate straightforward acquisition, salient
       ones are semantic and structural congruence—i.e., items that, regardless of their
       source, fulfill the same function or have the same semantic value or both—and
       predictability both in terms of their morphosyntactic positioning and aspects of
       their phonological form.

c.     Minimally disruptive of existing system
       Related to the characteristic of straightforward acquisition, for a feature pool
       item to be part of the semiosis layer, it should not otherwise be disruptive to the
       encoding of other kinds of meanings that community members are accustomed
       to expressing linguistically. For example, if, in a multilingual feature pool, there
       are candidate items from a number of languages exhibiting ATR harmony and
       one item from a language not exhibiting ATR harmony, within a set of highly
       frequent and semantically congruent items, the one that comes from the
       language without ATR harmony language would be a less likely member of a
       semiosis layer due to the fact it would clash with the existing phonologies of the
       languages from which the feature pool items are drawn and, therefore, be less
       easily acquired across a community.


These general properties should be interpreted with respect to the social backdrop of
our area of focus, as discussed in Section 2, namely the presence of relatively small
language communities and where individual-level multilingualism is the norm. The
extent to which a planned semiosis layer change will actually propagate through a
community clearly depends on both the extent to which both these conditions are
met, and will, all things being equal, be easier to implement in a community with
fewer individuals and where a high proportion of members have knowledge of the
neighbor-bias target languages.
     The membership of an item in the semiosis layer should be viewed as probabilistic
rather than deterministic. We do not assume that all feature pool items having the
three characteristics provided in (1) will necessarily be leveraged by a community for
encoding neighbor-bias. Rather, if a community consciously encodes neighbor-bias
then it is more likely than not that the items that it will leverage will have those three
characteristics. Also, the three characteristics in (1) say nothing about which types of
speech community events will result in a semiosis layer change as this will depend
entirely on extralinguistic factors.


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  However, we believe that these characteristics can be used in order to detect
whether a specific pattern of change is due to semiosis layer change. Just to take one
example, if we consider point (1a ii) above (frequency-derived potential), we realize
that semiosis layer change becomes a reasonable research hypothesis when in a
language one finds several apparently borrowed inflectional morphemes of high or
very high frequency but few or no borrowings in the lexicon from the same source.
By targeting high-frequency items with the only constraints that they should be easy
to acquire and minimally disruptive of the existing system, semiosis layer change
would be expected to normally transcend both borrowability hierarchies (e.g. Field
2002: 25–48; Matras 2009: 153–165)—as we will see in the cases discussed in Section
5 and Section 6—and the conventional wisdom on the degree of conservatism of items
of the so-called core vocabulary (e.g. Swadesh 1952, McMahon & McMahon 2006: 31–
50, Heggarty 2010), which, due to their high frequency, might be targeted more
effectively than non-core vocabulary for encoding neighbor-bias.
  Some final remarks should be made concerning the nature of the notion of the
semiosis layer. We do not think it will always be possible to provide a clear-cut
identification of the extent to which any change may be a semiosis layer change
because this will generally require access to information that is not found in the
historical record. In addition, we should be clear that our main goal in the application
of the semiosis layer model is that it may provide an opportunity to structure
inferences about the social underpinnings of specific instances of language change
that cannot be accounted for satisfactorily by traditional language-internal and
contact-based analyses. Finally, we do not assume that multiple motivations could
not be at play in a single change where, for example, a sound change following a
common pathway could result in an alternation that enters the semiosis layer and is
then used to encode neighbor-bias.


3.3. Modeling semiosis layer divergence


In order to make the discussion more concrete, we provide a schematic representation
of one possible route of semiosis layer divergence in Figure 4 below. The figure
represents the split of one linguistic community into two, and, for the sake of the
argument, we provide a simplified example. It should be kept in mind that the
sociopolitical realities that it is purported to represent—i.e., small-scale chiefdoms—
are common in traditional societies of the Grassfields (Fowler 2011) as well as in


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much of sub-Saharan Africa as a whole (e.g., de Heusch 1987), where kin groups of
diverse provenance form a community under the authority of a political and spiritual
leader—i.e. a “sacred chief”.




                  Figure 4: Schematic representation of semiosis layer divergence.
The initial situation (t=0) is one in which multiple kin groups (triangles) form a
community headed by a “royal” kin group (indicated by the crown symbol). In each
kin group, there are individuals who have competence in languages spoken in other,
neighboring communities (colored circles surrounding the triangles). While the


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community as a whole has a shared code (the main oval in the center), its members
have an aggregate repertoire of additional four other codes (blue, green, purple, and
yellow), associated with their respective communities.
  The situation depicted at t=1 is that of a fission of the community caused by a
conflict over leadership between the existing royal kin group and a second kin group
(indicated by the crown icon in a red triangle). At t=2, we see the consequences of
the fission: The initial community no longer exists as it is now split into two
autonomous communities, each headed by a royal kin group. The diagram on the left-
hand side represents what is left of the initial community—i.e., the original royal kin
group, three kin groups allied with it, and the initial shared code. The diagram on the
right-hand side represents the newly formed community—i.e., a royal kin group (no
longer in conflict with another kin group and, because of this, not depicted in red)
with two allied kin groups. A crucial difference between the two representations is
that the new community has changed some of the high-frequency items of its shared
code by drawing on forms from the multilingual feature pool at its disposal due to
the multilingual repertoires of its members. This is semiosis layer change because
(i) the forms targeted have high neighbor-opposition potential and (ii) the new forms
are drawn irregularly from among the pool available to the community—taken from
languages that are known also by members of the “mother” community—with the
primary goal of obtaining a code that is distinctive of the new community in its
sociolinguistic context. This change is made abruptly and both intersects with and
sets the stage for further, cumulative, invisible-hand changes that may take place in
this code.
  What is required for semiosis layer divergence is the formation of a new group in
one way or another, not necessarily that one group split directly into two groups. In
Section 5, we will argue that a specific semiosis layer change in the Munken variety
(munk1244; Niger-Congo, Yemne-Kimbi) of Mungbam (abar1238; Niger-Congo,
Yemne-Kimbi) took place in a different context and was the result of the formation of
a new group when outsiders entered an existing community.


4. Sociolinguistic group formation in “frontier” settings


Our proposals regarding the semiosis layer are informed not only by linguistic
evidence but also a range of other cultural features of Grassfields societies that are


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connected to broader observations about communities in sub-Saharan Africa, in
particular regarding the historical dynamics that lead to the formation and dissolution
of sociopolitical groupings there.
   For example, phenomena such as the spatial mobility of groups and the
incorporation of outside elements into societies have been amply discussed in African
anthropological literature as extremely widespread among both African traditional
and postcolonial societies (Cohen & Middleton 1972, Brooks 1993). One particular
pattern of mobility and incorporation that has characterized the history of a great
many traditional societies of sub-Saharan Africa has been characterized in terms of
“the African internal frontier” by Kopytoff (1987). This model of community
formation can be broadly described as follows: A group grows demographically until
internal conflicts lead to its fission, where one part of its population—usually tied
together by a relationship characterized in terms of kinship—leaves the settlement
and either founds a new political unit or is incorporated into an existing group. If it
forms a new political unit, in the ideal case, it does so in a region that is seen as
outside the political control of any other group and grows by “attracting to itself the
ethnic and cultural detritus produced by the routine workings of other societies”
(Kopytoff 1987: 7). Conflict between groups can lead them to become more distinctive
from each other across cultural, linguistic, and spatial dimensions, while groups
seeking to grow may take steps to attract and incorporate newcomers who are seeking
a new group to be part of.
   On the one hand, the newly formed communities are founded around the same
cultural models as the communities from which their component groups are drawn.
On the other hand, they must have cultural features that make them clearly distinctive
in the local cultural space as a means of justifying their independent status. This
creates a fundamental tension due to a need to exhibit difference in the context of
broad cultural similarity. This is achieved through rich patterns of variation overlaid
on a common sociocultural configuration. Linguistic distinctiveness is one element of
this, and it also involves variation in kinship structures, economic specialization, and
secret societies, among other sociocultural domains (Nkwi & Warnier 1982;
Röschenthaler 2011).
   Focusing on linguistic variation in these contexts specifically, we can first consider
what can be reconstructed with respect to a group’s attitudes towards its community
language in precolonial times in this part of the world. Regarding the Bamileke
societies of the southern Grassfields, for example, Voorhoeve (1971: 1) writes: “Each



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chiefdom considers its own language as the only possible linguistic norm. Dialect
differences are often exaggerated by the speakers, and the use of a specific dialect
seems to constitute a man’s very identity as belonging to a certain chiefdom (or tribe).
It does not seem conceivable for the inhabitants of a certain village to regard their
mother-tongue as a dialect of the language of some other village. Remarks of this
nature would certainly be interpreted as a kind of improper cultural imperialism from
the side of the competing village.” Di Carlo & Good (2014) reviewed evidence
indicating that very similar attitudes were still prevalent in the language ideologies
of Lower Fungom at the time.
     A second aspect of historical patterns of language use that can be reconstructed is
the extensive presence of multilingual competences among speakers of Grassfields
languages in the past. Before the introduction of lingua francas to the region (in
particular, French in the south and Cameroon Pidgin English in the north), inter-
community communication was possible only through multilingualism in the various
local languages. Based on a wealth of ethnographic data, Warnier (1980) concludes
that more than half of the inhabitants of the region were proficient in two local
languages, and that individuals who could speak three, four, or even five distinct
languages were not rare (Warnier 1980: 834). More recently, research on patterns of
traditional multilingualism in areas like Lower Fungom (e.g., Esene Agwara 2020,
Ojong Diba 2019) and Lower Bafut (e.g., Chenemo 2019; Chenemo and Neba 2020)
have confirmed that multilingualism in neighboring languages was the norm and has
been relatively widespread in local populations.5
     If we look at these historical patterns together two key points emerge. On the one
hand, the prevalence of an ideology of linguistic singularity (see Section 2) manifested
itself in pressure for a group to be linguistically distinct from neighboring groups, in
line with the notion of neighbor-bias selection discussed in Section 3.2. On the other
hand, widespread multilingualism meant that speakers would frequently have
knowledge of the lexicons and grammars of neighboring languages and were,


5
    Since 2016, the northern half of the Grassfields has been at the center of armed conflict between
separatist groups and the state army (Pommerolle & Heungoup 2017). Over time, this conflict has
pushed a great number of people to seek refuge in safer areas of Cameroon. There are no exact figures,
but the exodus from peripheral areas such as Lower Fungom has been massive. For example, refugees
from the area report that the village of Buu has been completely abandoned, and other villages are
currently inhabited by only a few families (Ikom Christopher, p.c.). The effects that this process of
forced displacement will have on the local forms of multilingualism can hardly be foreseen.


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therefore, able to target them in order to develop and maintain such distinctiveness,
in line with the idea that patterns of change in small-scale societies characterized by
high degrees of multilingualism can involve mechanisms, such as semiosis layer
change, that are different from more well-known kinds of change.6
     Having developed the conceptual approach that forms this paper, in the following
sections we consider two patterns of linguistic differentiation in the languages of
Lower Fungom, one targeting the nominal domain (Section 5) and the other the verbal
domain (Section 6). In particular, we will focus on how an approach employing the
semiosis layer model can allow us to make sense of patterns of variation that are
otherwise difficult to describe in traditional terms.


5. The historical development of the ki-/a- noun class in Mungbam


5.1. The linguistic context


Mungbam is a cover term for a language cluster comprising five dialects, each of
which is restricted to a single village, in the Lower Fungom region of North West
Cameroon (see Figure 5) at the northern edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields. The
language name is an acronym based on the beginnings of the English names of the
five villages where it is spoken: Munken, Ngun (ngun1279; Niger-Congo, Yemne-
Kimbi), Biya (biya1235; Niger-Congo, Yemne-Kimbi), Abar (abar1239; Niger-Congo,
Yemne-Kimbi), and Missong (miss1255; Niger-Congo, Yemne-Kimbi). Within Lower
Fungom, each of these varieties is recognized as a distinctive talk, and there is no
perceived linguistic unity among them. Mungbam, as a label, is restricted to scholarly
linguistic sources such as Lovegren’s (2013) grammar of the language.
     As is clear from the description presented in Lovegren (2013), the Mungbam
varieties are all lexicogrammatically quite close while also being clearly distinctive
from each other—put differently, dialect differences among the varieties are not
subtle. One of the varieties, Missong, is especially distinctive to the point where
scholarly criteria would probably group it as a distinct language from the other four,
which could then be characterized as a dialect cluster (see Di Carlo & Good 2014 for
further contextualization).


6
    This echoes Warnier’s (1980) speculation that, in the Grassfields, lexical items were borrowed to the
extent that they did not reduce the distinctiveness of a variety with respect to neighboring varieties—
or even enhanced it (Warnier 1980: 842).


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A set of varieties such as those associated with Mungbam presents us with a good
opportunity to explore the semiosis layer approach to the development of linguistic
differentiation. The five dialects are associated with villages which are geographically
quite close to each other. (The journey between the two most distant Mungbam
villages is only around two hours on foot during the dry season.) Before recent
patterns of displacement (see fn. 4), speakers of the different varieties were frequently
in contact, and many individuals are multilectal in multiple Mungbam varieties (see
Esene Agwara 2020 for a general overview of multilingualism and multilectalism in
Lower Fungom). This provides an ideal sociolinguistic setting for exploring the ways
that languages might be impacted by dynamics of change where a semiosis layer of
features is exploited to create salient differences among local varieties. Our focus will
be on a specific feature of the noun class systems of Mungbam varieties.




                  Figure 5: Language map of Lower Fungom and surrounding areas.




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5.2. Mungbam noun class systems and Class 7~12


Consistent with their classification in the Bantoid group of languages, the Mungbam
varieties show Bantu-like noun class systems where nouns appear with a prefix coding
their class, and class pairings are part of the encoding of a singular/plural distinction.
Each class is also associated with a specific pattern of agreement on elements such as
demonstratives and pronouns. The Mungbam noun class systems are described in
more detail in Lovegren (2013), and our presentation of them here leaves out various
complications, none of which critically impact the arguments being made here.
     The noun class systems for each dialect of Mungbam are summarized in Tables 2–
6 below. The shape of the prefixes appearing on noun stems is provided in the first
column for a class and a representation of the shape of the associated concord is in
the second column. Class numbering conventions follow those of Lovegren (2013),
which attempt to relate Mungbam noun classes to those reconstructed for Proto-
Bantu, though these should not be taken as definitive statements on cognacy. Typical
singular/plural class pairings are indicated via their placement in the same row.
Diacritics on the concords in the tables indicate that they are associated with a higher
or lower tone as compared to other concords, with the precise tonal realization
depending on the stem that they combine with. A capital N indicates a nasal which
assimilates to the place of a following consonant. The j is used for a palatal glide.
Classes listed with more than one prefix show lexical variation in prefix choice. Class
13 can show circumfixal coding, as indicated. Classes 5L and 5H seem to be associated
with Proto-Bantu Class 5, but they lack a consistent tone in Mungbam, which is why
they are separated into a low (L) and high (H) class here (see Lovegren 2013: 121).
Classes 6a and 14 are associated with nouns that do not encode a singular/plural
distinction, and are, thus, presented as unpaired in the tables.
     The noun class systems of the Mungbam varieties display segmental noun class
prefixes across all classes and are also similar to each other with respect to class
marking on the noun and agreement patterns.7 However, a noteworthy high-level
difference is found in the phonological shape of the marker of the singular class
pairing with plural Class 8. Lovegren (2013) labels this Class 12 for all Mungbam
varieties except Missong, where the label Class 7 is used. The use of the Class 12 label

7
    The presence of segmental prefixes across all classes has been considered a conservative feature if
compared to other Yemne-Kimbi and Beboid languages where some classes are either not coded on the
noun or marked only suprasegmentally (cf. Good et al. 2011).


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associates this class in Mungbam with a reconstructed Proto-Bantu noun class with
the shape *ka-, while the Class 7 label associates it with a reconstructed Proto-Bantu
noun class with the shape *ki- (see Maho 1999: 247 for an overview of reconstructions
of the Proto-Bantu noun classes). Class 7 would normally be expected to be paired
with Class 8 to encode a singular/plural distinction, which would argue in favor of
this reconstruction more broadly. However, except for Missong, the vowel seen in the
relevant forms is not in line with what would be expected for Class 7. For purposes
of exposition, we will refer to the singular class that is paired with Class 8 in
Mungbam languages as Class 7~12 here, as a way of signaling the lack of clarity in
its reconstruction.


                                                     Abar
            1         ù-/Ø-              w`-             2          bwe-/bə-/a-           bw-
            3         ú-                 w´-             4          í-                    j´-
            5L        ì-                 j`-             6          mwe-/məN-/a-          mw´-
            5H        í-                 j´-             13         i-/ki-…(-lɔ)          kj´-
            12        kə-/a-             k´ -            8          bi-/i-                bj´-
            9         ì-                 j`-             10         í-                    j´-
            19        ɕi-/i-             fj´-            18a        m͡N-                  mw´-
            6a        məN-/aN-           mw´-
            14        bu-/u-             bw`-


                                Table 2: The noun class system of Abar.


                                                     Biya

                       1       ù-/Ø-       w`-       2         bə-                 bɥ´-
                       3       ú-          w-        4         í-                  j´-
                       5L      ì-          j`-       6         a-                  w´-
                       5H      í-          j´-       13        kə-…(-lə)           kj´-
                       12      kə-         k´-       8         bi-                 bj´-
                       9       ì-          j`-       10        í-                  j´-
                       19      fi-         fj´-      18a       mN-                 mw´-
                       6a      N-          mw´-
                       14      bu-         bɥ`-


                                    Table 3: The noun class system of Biya.




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                                                           Missong
                       1         ù-/Ø-         w`-           2          ba-               bu´-
                       3         ú-            w´-           4          í-                j´-
                       5L        ì-            j`-           6          a-                w´-
                       5H        í-            j´-           13         ki-…(-Cə)         kj´-
                       7         ki-           k´-           8          bi-               bj´-
                       9         ì-            j`-           10         í-                j´-
                       19        fi-           f´-           18a        mu-               mu´-
                       6a        aN-           mu´-
                       14        bu-           bu-


                                Table 4: The noun class system of Missong.


                                                           Munken
                           1          ù-/Ø-         w`-      2         bə-              b´-
                           3          ú-            w´-      4         í-               j´-
                           we5L ì-                  j`-      6         a-               n´-
                           5H         í-            j´-      13        ki-…(-lə)        kj´-
                           12         a-            k´-      8         bi-              bj´-
                           9          ì-            j`-      10        í-               j´-
                           19         ɕi-           ɕ´-      18a       mu-              mw´-
                           6a         N-            m´-
                           14         bu-           bw`-


                                Table 5: The noun class system of Munken.


                                                           Ngun
                      1         ù-/Ø-         w`-                2          bə-               bw´-
                      3         ú-            w´-                4          í-                j´-
                      5L        ì-            j`-                6          a-                mw´-
                      5H        í-            j´-                13         kə-…(-Cə)         k´-
                      12        kə-           k´-                8          bi-               bj´-
                      9         ì-            j`-                10         í-                j´-
                      19        fi-           fj´-               18a        mN-               mw´-
                      6a        N-            mw´-
                      14        bu-           bw`-


                                     Table 6: The noun class system of Ngun.




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Lovegren (2013: 132–137) lays out in detail the problems involved with
understanding the historical source of Class 7~12 in Mungbam. First, a scenario
involving different patterns of sound change from a common ancestral form is not
tenable if one makes the standard assumption that sound correspondences should be
regular in the context of genealogical change (Campbell & Poser 2009: 4). All of the
varieties show i as the reflex of *i in their class markers, as is most easily seen in their
use of the bi- prefix for Class 8, which can be straightforwardly associated with Proto-
Bantu *bi-. Class 7~12 reflexes with the form kə- cannot, therefore, be seen as a
regular reflex of Proto-Bantu Class 7 *ki-. Associating them with Class 12 *ka- is not
problematic, in particular since this same vowel correspondence is seen in these
varieties in the Class 2 prefix form bə-, where the Proto-Bantu reconstruction is *ba-.
However, Missong Class 7~12 ki- cannot be seen as a regular reflex of Proto-Bantu
Class 12, but can be associated with Proto-Bantu Class 7 without any complications
regarding sound correspondences.
     The a- form of the prefix, which is found in Munken (Table 5), poses further
problems. While a *ka > a- sound change would not necessarily be unusual in general
historical terms, there is no evidence for such a change outside of this one prefix. The
a- realization of the prefix in Abar is associated with an optional process where
prefixes with initial consonants can be dropped, in which case ə alternates with a, as
seen not only for Class 7~12 in Table 2, but also Classes 2, 6 and 6a. However, no
such process is found in Munken.8
     We are left, then, with the following question regarding the Class 7~12 prefixes in
Mungbam: Why do there seem to be two different reflexes of Class 12, either kə- or
a-, with no clear way to account for them in terms of regular sound change across all
varieties?
     In contrast to our own point of view, an anonymous reviewer suggests that this
pattern is not historically problematic for two reasons: (i) The different noun class
prefix in Munken can be viewed as the result of a language-internal process in Munken
comparable to what is still seen in Abar, whose endpoint was the current attested


8
    Lovegren’s (2013) data on Ngun includes a- as an alternate prefix form for Class 7~12. His data for
Ngun was more restricted than for other varieties of Mungbam, and it is not clear what forms prompted
the inclusion of the a- form in that variety in his description. More recently collected data by
Tschonghongei (2022) suggests this is a relatively marginal pattern, which is why we do not include
it in Table 6. We do not have a specific account for the presence of this form in this paper, though we
can speculate that it entered Ngun via lexical borrowing.


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situation in Munken. And, (ii) this kind of minor irregularity is often encountered in
noun class prefixes of Bantu languages, especially in the northwest Bantu area which
is adjacent to the Grassfields.
   However, we believe that what we have presented in this section is sufficient to
make the case for a relationship between Munken a-, Abar/Ngun/Biya kV-, and
Missong ki- that cannot be accounted for in traditional genealogical or contact-based
terms. Furthermore, in a database collected as part of the larger research program
that informs the work described here, of about 400 respondents to a sociolinguistic
survey on local patterns of multilingualism, 73% of those who reported to be
proficient in Abar (n=124) and 88% of those who reported proficiency in Munken
(n=92) claimed knowledge of both lects. (See Esene Agwara 2020 for the research
methods underlying this data collection and a report on patterns found in a subset of
the currently available data.) If we also consider that the two villages are relatively
close to each other (less than two hours’ walk on footpaths), and that the ethnographic
fieldwork of the first author has found that intermarriages between them are common,
that both communities mostly relied on the same weekly market (the Abar market)
before the current period of conflict (see fn. 4), then the idea that social factors were
not involved with the development of this high-frequency feature that differs between
them seems to us to be relatively implausible. While this does not necessarily mean
that the difference arose due to semiosis layer change, it is not consistent with the
categorization of such a difference as a minor irregularity rather than a linguistically
significant one.
    We, therefore, believe that a detailed historical account of this difference across
the varieties is warranted, and we will propose one involving semiosis layer change
in Section 5.5. Before doing so, however, we look at these patterns in the wider areal
context in Section 5.3 and provide relevant non-linguistic information about Lower
Fungom cultures and history in Section 5.4.


5.3. Noun Class 7~12 prefixes with shape a- in the northern Grassfields


Far from being just a minor analytical discrepancy, the presence of different markers
for this class has in fact been seen as a historical problem for some time, and this
pattern is not isolated to Mungbam. The map in Figure 6 and the data presented in
Table 7 summarize the known distribution of markers of Class 7~12 and Class 8 in




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the northern Grassfields. Below, we summarize three proposals that were advanced
to account for the presence of marker a- instead of the expected kV-.

                                   Class
                                             Class 7    Class 8        Class 8
No. Language       Subgroup        7~12                                                    Source
                                             concord marker           concord
                                  marker
1    Bebe         Beboid         kə-         k- ́      bi-            b- ́         Hombert 1980
2    Kemezung     Beboid         kɨ-         k-        bi-            b-           Smoes 2010
3    Mbuk         Beboid         kɪ- / kə-   k-        bi-            b-           Tschonghongei 2022
4    Naki         Beboid         a-          k- ́      bi-            by- ́        Hombert 1980
                                                                                   (thesis)
5    Nchanti      Beboid         ki-         k- ́      bi-            by- ́        Hombert 1980
6    Noni         Beboid         ke-         k- ́      bi-            by- ́        Hombert 1980
7    Nsari        Beboid         ki-         k- ́      bi-            by- ́        Hombert 1980
8    Babanki      Central Ring   kə̀-        kV-       ə-             (ə-)         Akumbu & Chibaka 2012
9    Bum          Central Ring   a-          a-        u-             u-           Hyman 2005
10   Fungom       Central Ring   a-          ?         ɪ- / e- (cl.   ?            pers. comm.
11   Kom          Central Ring   a-          a-        ɨ-
                                                       6?)            ɨ-           Shultz 1997, Jones 1997
12   Kuk          Central Ring   kə̄-        k-        o-             w-           Hyman no date
13   Kung         Central Ring   kə̀-        kV-       ù-             wV- / ù-     Tatang 2016
14   Mmen         Central Ring   a-          k- / a-   e- (i- cl.     e- / ə-      Hyman 2005, no date
15   Oku          Central Ring   ke-         k-        e-
                                                       6)             w-           Hyman 2005, no date
16   Limbum       Mbam-Nkam      Ø-          y-        b- (cl. 2)     w- (cl. 2)   Fransen 1995
17   Aghem        West Ring      kɨ ́-       k- ́      ó-            w- ́         Hyman 1979
18   Isu          West Ring      kə́-        k-        ó-            w-           Hyman 1979
19   Weh          West Ring      kə́-        k-        ú-            u-           Hyman 2005, no date
20   Abar         YK             kə- / a-    k- ́      bi- / i-       bj-          Good et al. 2011
21   Ajumbu       YK             kə-         k-        bə-            b-           Good et al. 2011
22   Biya         YK             kə-         k- ́      bi-            bj-          Good et al. 2011
23   Buu          YK             kə-         kə-       bə-            bə-          Tschonghongei 2022
24   Fang         YK             Ø/kə-       k-        bə-            b-           Good et al. 2011
25   Koshin       YK             kə-         k-        bə-            b-           Good et al. 2011
26   Missong      YK             ki-         k- ́      bi-            bj-          Good et al. 2011
27   Mundabli-    YK             ø-          k-        ø-             b-           Good et al. 2011
28   Munken
     Mufu         YK             a-          k- ́      bi-            bj-          Good & Lovegren 2017
29   Ngun         YK             kə-         k- ́      bi-            bj-          Good et al. 2011


  Table 7: Distribution of noun class prefixes and concord markers of class 8 and the singular class
associated with it (i.e., class 7~12) in the languages of the northern Grassfields. The abbreviation YK
                                        stands for Yemne-Kimbi.


Lovegren (2013: 132–137) summarizes two previous proposals for the development
of Class 7~12 and also provides his own. We provide an overview of these analyses
here to contrast how the development of Class 7~12 has been analyzed from a




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traditional perspective on language change in comparison to a semiosis layer
approach.




   Figure 6: Map showing the distribution of prefixes of noun class 7~12 across languages of the
         northern Grassfields. Languages are numbered as in Table 7 (Babanki not on map).


As discussed by Lovegren (2013), Hombert (1980) approached the problem by
proposing that the kə- and a- forms of the prefix represent distinct reflexes of Class
12, while, in a variety like Missong, which shows a ki- form, the prefix is a reflex of
Class 7. He further suggests that an ancestral language had both Class 7 and Class 12,
where Class 12 specifically had diminutive function but that this diminutive function
was lost with some nouns still appearing with the Class 12 prefix without it having a
clear semantic function. The overlap between Class 7 and Class 12 agreement markers
would then have led to Class 12 nouns being pluralized with Class 8. As Lovegren
(2013) points out, a problem with this proposal is that it requires a given language to
have leveled all Class 7 and Class 12 nouns towards either Class 7 or Class 12, rather
than having a mixed prefixal pattern. While it is perhaps plausible that some


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languages would have uniformly leveled the prefix one way or another, it would be
surprising not to find at least one variety that retained a mixed pattern where some
nouns showed a reflex of ki- and others a reflex of ka-.
  Hyman (2005) provides an alternative scenario in his study of comparable patterns
in a number of Ring languages (Niger-Congo, Narrow Grassfields). The core of his
proposal is that Class 7~12 nouns should be viewed as historically connected to Class
7 where the Class 7 prefix had developed to have a morphologically complex form
*á-ki- where the *á- is a morphological initial vowel that appears on nouns in some
contexts. Hyman (2005: 329) hypothesizes that this vowel was originally used on
nominal modifiers but became extended to nouns and replaced the historical Class 7
marker. While Hyman’s proposal works in the context of the Ring data that he
considers, where the relevant alternation across varieties is that some show an a-
prefix for historically Class 7 nouns and others show kV- prefix, it does not extend
naturally to the Yemne-Kimbi situation where there is not only a lack of evidence for
an initial vowel of the sort found in Ring but where the contemporary forms across
varieties point also to the presence of at least two different k-initial prefixes.
  Lovegren’s (2013) own proposal is comparable to Hombert’s (1980) proposal in
assuming that the presence of historical Class 7 and Class 12 are needed to account
for the patterns found in Yemne-Kimbi languages. He suggests that the leveling
towards reflexes of Class 12 in many varieties could have been due to homophony
avoidance with plural Class 13, which can appear as a ki- prefix in some varieties.
However, his proposal is clearly tentative.
  One commonality to all three proposals is that they emphasize the role of language-
internal processes to account for variation associated with Class 7~12—i.e., they are
instances of what Möhlig (1981: 251) defines as the “unilinear monogenetic model of
language history”. The proposals of Lovegren (2013) and Hombert (1980) emphasize
sound change and analogy as primary explanatory factors. Hyman’s (2005) analysis
also invokes analogy alongside the reconstruction of a morpheme that was not
originally part of the noun class system but became integrated within it. None of these
analyses consider the possible role of language contact. They also cannot fully account
for all of the observed patterns which are resistant to an account purely in terms of
traditional approaches to language change.
  In the rest of this section, we will focus specifically on the fact that, among
Mungbam varieties, only Munken generally shows a- as the prefix on nouns for Class
7~12. We start with the assumption that the presence of the a- marker in Munken


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represents an innovation in comparison to the other Mungbam varieties, in particular
because a ki- marker is found in the Missong variety of Mungbam that is most distinct
from all the others, which strongly suggests that the kV- markers represent a shared
retention rather than a subgroup-specific innovation.
     Since an account based on regular sound change does not appear to be well
motivated for a Class 7~12 alternation, as discussed above, we can then consider the
possibility of some kind of borrowing or related type of contact-induced change. If
we look at Figure 6, which shows the spatial distribution of the data shown in Table 7,
we can see some potential candidate donor languages. In Lower Fungom, Munken is
not the only lect in which the singular of Noun Class 8 plurals is prefixed with a-, as
this is also seen in Naki (naki1238; Niger-Congo, Beboid). In addition, relatively close
to Lower Fungom to the south, we find four Central Ring languages that have a-
instead of the most common kV-: Bum (bumm1238; Niger-Congo, Narrow
Grassfields), Kom (komc1235; Niger-Congo, Narrow Grassfields), Fungom (fung1247;
Niger-Congo, Narrow Grassfields), and Mmen (mmen1238; Niger-Congo, Narrow
Grassfields).9 Should we consider the hypothesis that Munken has borrowed the 7~12
noun class prefix a- from one of these languages? If so, how can contact-induced
change be so selective and what was the precise process through which it was
borrowed? Is there anything in the history of these communities that might suggest
that such a hypothesis is in fact tenable? To answer these questions, we first present
information on the ethnographic features of Lower Fungom’s communities, as well as
their history, in the next section.


5.4. Ethnographic and historical considerations


Available ethnographic, archival, and archaeological evidence for Lower Fungom and
its immediate surroundings (e.g., Chilver & Kaberry 1968, Di Carlo 2011, Di Carlo &
Pizziolo 2012) indicates that social formation dynamics in Lower Fungom largely
reflect the internal African frontier model (see Section 4). Nearly all of today’s village
communities are either the outcome of incorporation that took place locally between
groups of firstcomers and newcomers (e.g., Biya, Munken, Missong) or have settled
in Lower Fungom as a consequence of earlier splits from larger communities (e.g.,

9
    For the sake of simplicity, in Table 7 we have generalized the use of the term “language” to refer to
any named language regardless of its status. As is shown in Figure 5, though, Fungom is considered as
a variety of Mmen.


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Koshin, Kung, and the Naki-speaking Mashi).10 Oral traditions reporting individuals
or entire families being incorporated in a larger group are commonly encountered in
all the villages. Data from genealogies, toponymy (see e.g., Di Carlo & Pizziolo 2012),
and the existence of strong relationships between individual kin groups settled in
different villages further contribute to view this area as one of past and present—at
least until 2016 (see fn. 4)—intense cross-village contacts, flow of individuals and
families, and incorporation of outsiders.
     Ideological pressures for linguistic singularity have also been clearly documented
as they emerge at the level of both explicit and implicit ideologies (see Pakendorf et
al. 2021: 3–5). Regarding explicit ideologies, a one-to-one correspondence between
village-chiefdoms and languages surfaces in metalinguistic remarks stressing that only
a group that is associated with a distinctive speech form can aspire to political
independence (see, e.g., Di Carlo & Good 2014). With respect to implicit ideologies,
analyses of spontaneous multilingual language use have shown that, in Lower
Fungom, switching between local lects during one and the same interaction is a rare
event and, when it is observed, it co-occurs with significant changes in the situational
context such as the arrival of a new interactant or a disagreement of some kind (see,
e.g., Ojong Diba 2019, Di Carlo et al. 2020).
      All the communities of the area show broadly similar cultural patterns otherwise
found in the Grassfields. In an attempt to capture the cultural diversity found in the
area Di Carlo (2011) proposed the adoption of a heuristic Lower Fungom “canon”
meant to measure diversity along dimensions such as settlement patterns, social
organization, attributes of village chiefs, and names and key features of village-based
secret associations. With the exception of Missong, the Mungbam-speaking villages
all align quite closely with the Lower Fungom canon and are culturally very similar
to each other.
     One of the few features breaking this Mungbam unity is the name of one of the
village-based secret associations with mainly ritual functions. See Table 8 for relevant
data. In Munken, this is called ntələ, which is unknown to the other Mungbam-
speaking villages and, by contrast, finds its closest analogs in Fang (ntol) (fang1248;


10
     The only exception seems to be Fang, which is reported to have been founded by a community of
fugitives seeking to escape from the control of other, neighboring groups (Di Carlo 2011, Mve et al.
2019). It is hard to say, however, if this community was actually closed off enough to outside influence
to actually escape the processes of incorporation of outside groups that pervade the whole of the
Grassfields.


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Niger-Congo, Yemne-Kimbi), Koshin (nti) (kosh1246; Niger-Congo; Yemne-Kimbi),
and Kung (ntul), none of which is a Mungbam-speaking village. Interestingly, the form
ntələ most closely resembles forms referring to very similar social institutions found
in larger and highly centralized chiefdoms located to the south of Lower Fungom, i.e.,
Bum ntul (Chilver 1993: 8–9 June 1960) and Kom ntul (Nkwi 1976: 32 and Chilver &
Kaberry 1968: 85), as well as in the small chiefdom of Fungom, where the form ntələ
is found (see Chilver & Kaberry 1968: 92–93). The languages associated with these
chiefdoms—i.e., Bum, Kom, and the Fungom variety of Mmen—are all Central Ring
languages.


Village (Language)           Secret associations      Secret associations     Inner circles
                             with mainly political    with mainly ritual
                             functions                functions

Abar (Mungbam)               əkpwinan                 eko                     itshung
Biya (Mungbam)               əkponənang               eko                     itshung, kwifantɔ
Missong (Mungbam)            olam / nlyam             olam, eko               itsang
Munken (Mungbam)             ?                        ntələ, ikwæ             itshung, ube
Ngun (Mungbam)               əkponənə                 ikwæ                    ?
Ajumbu                       ntshuin                  ntshuin                 ?
Buu                          kə (?)                   kə                      tzang, ntənəyən
Fang                         kwifon                   ntol, təmì              təm (?)
Koshin                       kwifon                   nti ̧                   ?
Kung                         kwifon                   ntul, fəbafə            ?
Mashi                        ntshu                    ntshu                   ?
Mufu (Mufu-Mundabli)         ji (?)                   ntshu                   ?
Mundabli (Mufu-Mundabli) kwal (?)                     ntshu                   ?
Bum                          kwifon                   ntul                    chum, ?
Fungom                       kwifon                   ntələ                   ?
Kom                          kwifoyn                  ntul                    nggvu, kwifoyn ntu’u


Table 8: Distribution and names of the higher male secret associations in Lower Fungom villages and
      in the three nearest centralized chiefdoms—i.e., Bum, Fungom, and Kom (table updated from
                      Di Carlo 2011: 69). Mungbam-speaking villages are bolded.


Limiting ourselves again to the case of Munken, which is our main focus in the
linguistic analysis of the development of class 7~12, oral traditions report that the


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founders of the village formed a group that originally split from Tabenken, a chiefdom
located some 50 kilometers as the crow flies to the east where Limbum (limb1268;
Niger-Congo, Narrow Grassfields) is spoken (Fransen 1995). Oral traditions also
report that those who later founded Munken took a southern route to get from
Tabenken to Lower Fungom and that Munken grew through unions with local women,
mainly from Abar and Ngun. Based on this evidence, Di Carlo (2011: 86) concluded
that “at some time in the past Munken must have had important relations, though of
an unknown kind, with groups settled generally to the south, probably outside of
Lower Fungom.”
  Having presented this ethnographic and historical overview, in Section 5.5, we
provide a semiosis layer change analysis of the development of Class 7~12 in
Munken.


5.5. Account for the development of Class 7~12 in Munken


Up to this point, we have seen how language-internal reconstructions of the
development of Class 7~12 in Mungbam proposed by Hombert (1980) and Lovegren
(2013), as well as Hyman’s (2005) hypothesis of a- as a pre-prefix to account for this
form in other languages of the area, are associated with a number of unresolved
issues. At the same time, the overall picture outlined just above in Section 5.4 suggests
that Munken’s founders had important relations with groups settled to the south of
its present location, where it is likely that Central Ring languages were spoken at the
time (as they are today). If we add the fact that Munken was founded about one
century before the arrival of Naki speakers in the area and that there is no evidence
indicating significant relationships between the village of Munken and the Naki-
speaking villages of Mashi and Mekaf (Di Carlo 2011, Di Carlo & Pizziolo 2012), then
the most initially straightforward hypothesis for the development of Class 7~12
prefix a- in Munken, under standard approaches to language change, might be to
suggest that it was borrowed from some Central Ring language. However, we believe
there are a number of reasons to reject this hypothesis on linguistic grounds.
  In order to make our argument clearer, we should clarify different potential routes
for the a- prefix to have entered Munken, as summarized in (2), building on
terminology developed in Seifart (2015) for the first two scenarios, which we take as
representative of the standard historical approach to patterns of the kind seen in
Munken, along with our own proposal in the third scenario.


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(2)


a.     Indirect borrowing: The prefix would have entered Munken via borrowing of
       whole words from some Central Ring variety (or varieties) and then have been
       extended to all Class 7~12 nouns. This scenario would additionally need to
       assume that these nouns were assigned to Class 7~12 in terms of agreement as
       well.
b.     Direct borrowing: The prefix would have been directly borrowed from a
       Central Ring variety into Munken via speakers with knowledge of the grammars
       of both languages. This scenario would additionally need to assume that the
       borrowing resulted in the replacement of the prefix earlier found on Class 7~12
       nouns with this new prefixal form in a way that ultimately impacted all Class
       7~12 nouns.
c.     Semiosis layer change: Munken was founded by a diverse community. Within
       the feature pool that linguistically co-occurred with this demographic diversity,
       there were also (at least) two variant forms for coding noun class on nouns,
       neither of which had strong semantic associations and which appeared, in
       different varieties, on stems with similar shapes and meanings. As a response to
       pressures for linguistic singularity, the variant that ensured the highest
       distinctiveness from neighboring lects was selected.


Both (2a) and (2b) can be straightforwardly understood in terms of contemporary
theory on contact-induced affixal change but are disconnected from the
sociolinguistic and ideological specificities of the relevant speech communities as
discussed in Section 5.5. Scenario (2c), by contrast, gives precedence to extralinguistic
evidence that is specific to the relevant communities but proposes a teleological
mechanism that is outside of the scope of typical approaches to contact-induced
change in the domain of affix borrowing. All three proposals must therefore be
considered speculative to some extent, though in different directions, which is why
none of them can be immediately dismissed without further consideration.
     There are two main reasons why we think that scenarios (2a) and (2b) above are
unlikely. In the case of (2a), while it would not be unreasonable to view borrowings
as a possible route through which a new prefix could enter a language, for the prefix
to not only enter the language but also be extended systematically to all nouns in the
noun class with the most members in the language would be a very unusual change.



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In a dataset of around 500 nouns from Munken, for example, about one third were
assigned to this Class 7~12/8, one fifth to the Class 1/2, with the remaining 50%
distributed over five other class pairings showing a singular/plural distinction and
the two unpaired noun classes (6a and 14) (Tschonghongei 2022, see Figure 7).11 If a
process like the one outlined in (2a) were to have taken place, we would expect at
least some nouns in Munken to retain the earlier form of prefix. The scenario in (2b)
is associated with the same problem. While direct borrowing of an affix in a highly
multilingual setting like Lower Fungom is plausible, the complete replacement of the
original prefixal coding on nouns still cannot be readily accounted for under this
scenario. Furthermore, both these hypotheses are problematic for another reason. A
comparison of about 100 core vocabulary items from several Central Ring languages
(Hyman no date) with their equivalents in Munken does not seem to yield a single
clear case of lexical borrowing, and it would be difficult to justify that contact would
materialize in one isolated inflectional morpheme of the most populous noun class
without also affecting at least part of the basic vocabulary.




 Figure 7. Distribution of the proportion of nominal concepts across singular/plural class pairings in
 two speakers of Munken (entire wordlist n=612, speaker 1=564 data points, speaker 2=333 data
     points; the two speakers are not identified in the chart as its goal is to provide information on the
overall patterns of noun class membership and a rough representation of individual-based variation).
 Each red dot represents the average value for the distribution of singular/plural class pairing across
the two speakers. The percentage refers to the proportion of lexical items that are found in that class
 pairing out of the total number of lexical items considered. The lines around the points the range of
        percentages across the two speakers regarding the percentage of lexical items in each class.



11
     Figure 7 was created using the ggplot2 R package (Wickham 2016).


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In fact, the latter point suggests a completely different interpretation. Due to the large
number of nouns assigned to the Class 7~12/8 pairing, nouns in these classes are
likely to occur frequently in discourse, which means that any indices associated with
this gender—i.e., singular and plural class prefixes and their corresponding agreement
markers—are also very likely to occur with a frequency in discourse that is higher
than those of any other class pairing. This claim finds further support in the fact that
membership in the Class 7~12/8 pairing is semantically unconstrained—nouns in
this class have human, animal, and inanimate referents—unlike pairings like Class
1/2, Class 9/10, and Class 19/18 which are almost entirely composed of nouns
referring to humans, animals, and diminutives respectively. From a teleological point
of view, this makes the coding of Class 7~12/8 a strong candidate for creating and
maintaining linguistic distinctiveness. Within the framework of our semiosis layer
model (Section 3.2.3), this means that a prefix with form a- in the Mungbam context
has high neighbor-opposition potential, can be acquired straightforwardly, because
the relevant forms are semantically and structurally congruent (in this case simply
being two noun class prefixes, one with form kV- and the other with form a-), and is
minimally disruptive because, on top of being congruent, these are each indices of a
semantically unconstrained noun class.
   Given this, what we propose is that the Class 7~12 pattern, and, in particular, the
presence of the a- form in Munken, is not due to well-known processes of linguistic
change such as regular sound change, analogy, or borrowing, but, rather, is the result
of semiosis layer change. Specifically, during the creation of the sociopolitical unit
that would become the village of Munken, an individual, a group of individuals, with
knowledge of other languages that used an a- prefix for the equivalent class in other
languages engaged in a kind of linguistic “micro-engineering” to replace a kV- prefix
on all nouns in Class 7~12 with an a- prefix, without otherwise altering the noun
class system. This would seem to be in line with what Warnier (1980: 842) identified
as a general pattern in the Grassfields where “des chefferies crées par scission d’une
autre chefferie ont dévéloppé, en quelques générations, des différences linguistiques
telles qu’elles permettent d’identifier immédiatement un locuteur [the chiefdoms
created by splitting off from another chiefdom have developed, in few generations,
linguistic differences that allow a speaker to be immediately identified; translation by
the authors]”.
   One thing this analysis leaves open is what the original source of the a- variant
was. On the basis of the data that we have available to us, we have no definite answer



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Di Carlo & Good                                           Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


for this. However, in a society characterized by high degrees of individual-level
multilingualism, there are many possible ways for variation to enter the semiosis
layer. For example, a regular sound change in one language could produce a
morphological form that is selected for in a different language, or analogical leveling
in one language could result in a morphological pattern which is only partly adopted
into another language. As is the case with wanderwörter (see Blench 2008 in an African
context), this may be a situation where there is evidence for borrowing of a form even
in the absence of a specific source for it.
      In the next section, we look at another domain of grammar in the languages of
Lower Fungom, namely tense-aspect marking. In this case, we consider the overall
structure of the systems found across languages of the region and argue that
accounting for the observed patterns also requires an appeal to neighbor-bias change
and the semiosis layer.


6. Tense-aspect marking in Lower Fungom


6.1. Overall structure of Lower Fungom tense and aspect systems


In order to provide another example of linguistic variation which we think can be
usefully examined from the perspective of a model of language change based on
semiosis layers, in this section, we will consider the encoding of tense and aspect in
the verbal systems of languages of Lower Fungom, with a particular focus on the
referential Yemne-Kimbi group. Like other languages of the Grassfields, Yemne-Kimbi
languages have relatively complex tense-aspect systems, in particular due to the
presence of remoteness distinctions in the past and future tenses. For the discussion
of this section, we build, in particular, on the work of Botne (2021), who synthesized
the information available in a number of descriptive works on Yemne-Kimbi
languages and incorporated the data into a general framework for modeling tense and
aspect systems with remoteness distinctions.12 While the grammatical subsystem
being examined in this section is functionally quite distinct from noun class marking,
the historical issues raised by the observed variation in the encoding of tense and
aspect in these languages are quite similar. The formal encoding of tense–aspect

12
     The tense-aspect system of one Yemne-Kimbi language, Fang, is not sufficiently well-described to be
discussed in this section. The same is also true for the Mufu variety, whose most closely related variety
is Mundabli.


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categories is not amenable to straightforward interpretations in terms of inheritance
or simple patterns of contact, though there is a shared semantic foundation on which
the systems are built.
     Broadly speaking, tense and aspect are primarily coded in Yemne-Kimbi languages
through the use of preverbal markers and tonal inflection on the verb along with other
kinds of morphological marking such as segmental alternations in the verb or
postverbal markers. Relevant examples, drawn from Voll’s (2017) description of
Mundabli are provided in (3a) and (3b). In the tense-aspect data presented in this
section, the glossing abbreviations P0, P1, P2, and P3 are used for past tenses at
differing degrees of remoteness (with P0 being just after utterance time and P3 being
the most distant from utterance time, though not all languages will necessarily encode
all possible degrees of remoteness). The abbreviations F1, F2, and F3 are used in the
same way for different degrees of remoteness in the future (though see Botne 2021
for a specific way to analyze remoteness distinctions that does not assume that they
strictly encode remoteness on a simple linear timeline).


(3)    Mundabli (Niger-Congo, Yemne-Kimbi; Voll 2017: 197, 200)


a.     wù          à     tʃǔ         kpɒ́            wū-dzú   w-ɔ́   ŋgɔ̀
       CL1.PVB P2        come(b)     CL3/7a.week CL3-other CL3-DET   upon
       ‘He arrived last week.’
b.     bɔ̋   ka᷇       mú     ʃí            ā     bɔ̌
       CL2   F2        take(a) descend(a)     COM CL2

       ‘They shall bring them down.’


Table 9 and Table 10 adapt Botne’s (2021: 13) summary presentation of tense-aspect
marking in Yemne-Kimbi languages. Table 9 presents an overview of past tense
marking, and Table 9 presents an overview of present and future tense marking, as
well as present progressive aspect. The data in the table is based on the following
sources: Ousmanou (2014) for Koshin, Voll (2017) for Mundabli, Ngako Yango (2012)
for Buu (buuu1246; Niger-Congo; Yemne-Kimbi), Lovegren (2013) for the five
Mungbam varieties (see Section 5.2 for more information on these varieties), and
Tschonghongei (2019) for Ajumbu (mbuu1238; Niger-Congo; Yemne-Kimbi). In the
table, the symbol V is used to represent the position of the verb. Where relevant, it is
additionally indicated if the verb stem in a given construction appears in either an



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Di Carlo & Good                                              Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


Imperfective form (IMPV) or Irrealis form (IRR), and, when Botne (2021) indicated an
additional tonal feature on a verb, this indicated using a superscript L or H following
his presentation. The level of descriptive detail available for Yemne-Kimbi languages
varies by language, and further work may demonstrate a need to refine the
presentation of some details of these systems, in particular with respect to tonal
patterns. However, we do not expect any such refinements to significantly impact the
general points being made here.
  Botne’s (2017: 32) overall assessment of the tense-aspect systems of the Yemne-
Kimbi languages is that “the linguistic exponents marking temporal domains and
regions vary significantly across the Yemne‐Kimbi languages.” At the same time,
“what is striking, apart from the individual changes, is the convergent development
in the organization of the tense/aspect systems to the extent that there is a nearly
one‐to‐one correspondence between forms in all but the most recent arrival to [Lower
Fungom], Koshin.” An examination of Table 9 and Table 10 reveals some areas of
clear similarity both formal and functional across the languages, such as the coding
of the Present forms and the Future forms, which do not show an F1 and F2 distinction
in most cases. At the same time, in other tenses, while there is clear functional
similarity, there is also significant formal variation. Focusing on the Mungbam
varieties, in particular, Missong and Abar pattern one way with respect to P2 and P3
forms, with k-initial forms, while Ngun and Munken pattern a different way, with l-
initial forms, and Biya showing a form with l, as well, but also with an initial à not
found in the other varieties.


                            Variety           P3             P2          P1              P0
                   Koshin                nə=nyā=V     H
                                                            nə́= V
                                                                L
                                                                            yə́= V  L


                   Mundabli                  kə̀ V         nàV~ à V      fə̋ V           ØV
                   Buu                                       fə̀ V               kə̀ V
                            Missong         kà VIRR          kà V       ká V             ØV
                            Abar            kə̀ VIRR         kə̀ V      ha̋ V            ØV
                  Mungbam




                            Ngun            lē VIRR          lē V        fə̋ V           ØV
                            Munken          lē VIRR          lē V        fə̋ V           ØV
                            Biya            àlə̄ V          àlə̀ V    fə̋ ~ fə̄ V        ØV

                   Ajumbu                    àV              áV          ǹ V            ØV


                               Table 9: Simple Pasts in Yemne-Kimbi languages.




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                   Variety         Present         Prog                   F1                  F2
          Koshin                    Ø V
                                      L
                                                  V‑lə̄‑lɛ̄          kə̄(=lə̄)=V        bə́=kə̄=V(-lɛ́)
          Mundabli                   ØV          fa̋ ā N-V      dɨ ̋ V                      ka᷇ V
          Buu                        ØV            V kə                        áV   H


                   Missong         Ø VIMPV     VIMPV ɲàŋIMPV                   áV
                   Abar            Ø VIMPV       VIMPV lànɔ                    áV
         Mungbam




                   Ngun            Ø VIMPV      VIMPV lan/kə                   áV
                   Munken          Ø VIMPV       V ɲàIMPV                      áV
                   Biya            Ø VIMPV      VIMPV ɲì-ɲà                    áV

          Ajumbu                     ØV            V kə̀                       ń V̄


                          Table 10: Simple Present and Futures in Yemne-Kimbi languages.


In the P1 forms, Abar and Missong no longer pattern together, but Ngun, Munken,
and Biya do, on the whole. Looking outside of Mungbam, the Buu system is only
described as having a two-way Past tense distinction, and its system uses similar forms
to some Mungbam varieties, but they appear to be flipped with respect to what they
encode, with an f-initial form for a P2 form and k-initial form for a P1 form. The
Mundabli forms, again, overlap with forms found in other varieties, but not in any
way that results in a clear isogloss. Ajumbu is somewhat different from the other
languages in the past tense in the form of its markers, though there are some areas of
overlap, such as with Mundabli in P2 and a partial overlap with Biya in P3 and P1.
   In the Progressive forms, with the exception of Mundabli, all languages show a
postverbal marker coding progressive aspect, and, while there is some formal overlap,
there are also some formal differences among all the varieties, with the exception of
Ajumbu and Buu, which show some differences in tone, where the Buu postverbal
marker’s tone is predictable based on its phonological context (Ngako Yango 2013:
99–100).
   Notably, the patterns of formal convergence in tense-aspect marking do not overlap
with lexical similarities among the varieties, at least on the basis of the most up-to-
date analyses of lexical variation among Lower Fungom varieties, as discussed in
Good et al. (under review). Within Mungbam, Missong is the unambiguous lexical
outlier and does not form any kind of low-level grouping with Abar. Ngun and Biya
form a relatively clear unit, as well, and while both are also relatively close to
Munken, this is not the same grouping that is implied by the tense-aspect marking.
The other varieties are otherwise relatively distant from each other in lexical terms



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 Di Carlo & Good                                      Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


 on the whole, making it hard to detect any obvious mismatches between the tense-
 aspect systems and the lexical data.


 6.2. Interpreting the similarities and differences among the tense-aspect systems


 Botne (2021) develops a historical proposal for the development of salient formal
 aspects of the tense-aspect patterns discussed just above in terms of standard notions
 of genealogical inheritance and borrowing. His proposal for tense and progressive
 markers is summarized in Table 11, which is adapted from his original table (Botne
 2021: 29).
    In Table 11, rows labeled Common form are for forms appearing in multiple Yemne-
 Kimbi languages with no obvious single source. The label Innovation is applied to two
 changes. The first is the development of the progressive marker in Abar, which
 appears to transparently derive from a verb meaning ‘go’ (Lovegren 2013: 450).


Change        Particle        Recipient                                                Source

Common form á         FUT     Ngun Abar                                          Buu
Innovation    lànɔ    PROG           Abar

Borrowing     làn     PROG    Ngun                                                     (< Abar)

Borrowing     ha̋     P1             Abar                                              (< Biya)

Borrowing     fə̋     P1      Ngun                 Munken                              (< Biya)

Borrowing     fə̋     P1                    Biya                                       (< Mmen)

Common form ɲà        PROG                  Biya Munken Missong

Borrowing     lē      P2                    Biya Munken                                (< Ngun)

Borrowing     á       FUT                   Biya Munken Missong                        (< Ngun, Abar)

Borrowing     kà      P2                                    Missong                    (< Abar)

Innovation    ká      P1                                    Missong

Borrowing     fa̋     P1                                              Mundabli         (< Limbum?)

Borrowing     kə̀     P3                                              Mundabli         (< Abar?)

Borrowing     nà      P2                                              Mundabli         (< Koshin ?)


   Table 11: Proposed changes using a traditional model of descent and contact (Botne 2021: 29).




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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


The second is the Missong P1 form, which Botne (2021: 18) treats as a Missong-
specific extension of a ka form to P1 contexts after being borrowed from Abar in P2
and P3 contexts. As indicated in the table, he treats many of the other forms as a result
of extensive borrowing across different language pairs, including two donor languages
from outside of Lower Fungom, namely Mmen and Limbum.
   Some of the proposed borrowing patterns are plausible from a sociolinguistic
perspective, such as claims that some Mungbam varieties may have borrowed forms
from Abar, the most widely spoken Mungbam variety. Other proposals are less
plausible, such as the proposal that Biya fə̋ is the source of an Abar form ha̋. Not only
does this proposal require sound change to have affected the Abar form, but it is also
sociolinguistically problematic given that Biya is associated with a much smaller
village than Abar and is not especially socioculturally powerful in the Lower Fungom
region. More striking is the proposal that the entire Mundabli past tense marking
system is borrowed, especially given that one of the proposed scenarios, involving
Mundabli adopting a nà marker from Koshin is a poor fit for the social reality that
Mundabli and Koshin have historically had an antagonistic relationship. More
broadly, Botne’s (2021) rests on the rather striking assumption that borrowing of
tense and aspect markers within Yemne-Kimbi languages is a common phenomenon
even though this runs counter to general observations regarding the fact that
functional elements, such as tense markers, are less prone to borrowing than content
elements (see, e.g., Tadmor 2009: 60).
   In a manner parallel to our analysis of Class 7~12 patterns in Section 5, we are
less interested in critiquing the details of Botne’s (2021) analysis than in recognizing
the ways in which a semiosis layer approach can provide a more insightful account
of the observed patterns than one which is limited to viewing the development of
linguistic systems primarily through the lens of genealogical inheritance and
borrowing. As is the case with noun class systems, tense and aspect marking in Yemne-
Kimbi languages has three key characteristics: (i) there is a common set of functional
distinctions encoded across all of the languages of the region, (ii) these distinctions
are encoded using markers with broadly similar formal properties, and (iii) the actual
sets of formal markers found are drawn from a relatively limited set of patterns that
show non-systematic recurrences across languages. The Class 7~12 case involved
only two markers, an a- and kə-, while the tense and aspect markers discussed here
are more varied. However, the same basic patterns remain.




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Di Carlo & Good                               Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


  From the perspective of a semiosis layer approach to language change, the
explanation for these patterns involves a relatively straightforward extension of the
account offered for Class 7~12 markers in Section 5.5. They share several key features
with Class 7~12 markers. The relevant elements are relatively high frequency items
given the nature of tense-aspect marking in Yemne-Kimbi languages, resulting in high
neighbor-bias potential. They encode semantic categories that are largely aligned
across the varieties, which means that each variety will have a means for expressing
them, which will also make it easy to acquire a new variant occupying a slot that
speakers have already acquired independently. Finally, their predictable syntactic
positioning and phonological structure (e.g., as CV elements) means that replacing
them with forms with similar shapes will be minimally disruptive to the overall
system. Taken together, these features make tense-aspect markers good candidates
for encoding neighbor-bias selection, which is precisely where we expect to see
semiosis layer change.
  Adopting a semiosis layer approach to the development of tense and aspect
marking in Yemne-Kimbi languages allows us to account for the obvious similarities
found across the languages without need to propose complex, and largely
unsupported, borrowing scenarios such as those presented in Table 11. This is because
we do not need to identify any one specific variety as the source for a given set of
variants or assume that variation is purely the result of regular internal changes
creating new forms which are then transferred across varieties in a neat chronological
fashion where such borrowings are seen as discrete and independent events. Rather,
we can view the variation as resulting from the availability of a layer of “floating”
variants in the local sociolinguistic space which are assembled to create tense-aspect
systems which show formal overlap across the group of languages but not in a way
that creates clear higher-level divisions. The resulting differences also result in
systems where each variety has at least one element that distinguishes it from each
other variety while also having forms which overlap with many other varieties.
  We realize that we are again replacing a complex and speculative scenario with
another admittedly speculative scenario. However, our proposal at least has the
advantage of relating linguistic events with speech community events—i.e., situations
of increased ideological pressure for linguistic singularity—that existing knowledge
on the societies of the Grassfields portrays as the norm in precolonial times. In this
sense, it can account for both the observed grammatical patterns while also explaining
why they have some properties (e.g., those in line with neighbor-opposition) but not


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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


others (e.g., broader lexical convergence), whereas earlier accounts lack such
potential explanatory power. Therefore, while we certainly would not say that the
current state of the evidence is consistent only with our account, we believe that, for
any competing account to be stronger, it must not only be able to provide a structural
linguistic mechanism through which the relevant patterns were produced but also a
sociolinguistic account as to why those patterns are found instead of other logical
possibilities.


7. Conclusion


We have taken the first steps to model a mechanism of language change, involving
semiosis layers and neighbor-bias, which we believe is needed to account for the
entirety of the dynamics of change in the small-scale societies of the Cameroonian
Grassfields and, most likely, beyond. We are aware that our proposals here may be
controversial from the perspective of traditional approaches to historical linguistics,
in particular the idea that much more language change in the Grassfields is likely to
be consciously directed than previous work has assumed. We also acknowledge that
our proposals also are somewhat speculative in nature insofar as the data we have
provided does not rule out other pathways of change that would result in the observed
patterns. Nevertheless, we think they offer a promising way forward to provide a full,
socially embedded, account of the operation of language change in this part of the
world.
   From a methodological perspective, studying potential instances of semiosis layer
change requires data that are not typically available from traditional descriptive
resources. For instance, on the structural linguistic side, in order to determine if a
change will have high neighbor-bias potential, having data on the frequency of the
use of a specific linguistic feature can be crucial. However, this may not always be
readily available. Noun class system descriptions, for example, do not always provide
detailed information on the proportion and frequency of usage of the nouns that
belong to the class, which can be important for assessing whether change in the form
of a noun class marker is a candidate for analysis as a semiosis layer change. On the
sociolinguistic side, it is important to have information on the patterns of
multilingualism found within an area as well as the ways that linguistic difference is
linked to local identities. We, therefore, hope that work along the lines of what has




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Di Carlo & Good                                   Language contact or linguistic micro-engineering?


been presented here may stimulate kinds of data collection in highly multilingual
areas that have not typically been prioritized.
  The analyses presented above also suggest the importance of looking at patterns of
language change in forms without significant (or any) change to the semantic
distinctions expressed within a linguistic system from a strongly sociolinguistic
perspective. The semiosis layer approach suggests that it is precisely these kinds of
forms that should be targets for changes intended to construct new social identities
mediated, at least in part, through linguistic difference.
  With respect to the situation of the Grassfields specifically, we believe the approach
presented here can address longstanding problems of historical analysis. Despite the
fact that the languages are clearly related on some level, it has proven difficult to
assign languages of the region to clear-cut subgroups. We believe that this is likely
not due to the fact that insufficient work has been done to find such subgroups.
Rather, widespread semiosis layer change would create patterns of variation that
simply do not align with the family tree model (see also Schadeberg 2003: 156 for
comparable observations for Bantu languages).
  More broadly, given that we understand the semiosis layer change to be directly
tied to the construction of social identities and to the internal workings of societies,
the way that the diverging and overlapping patterns of tense and aspect marking
parallel the crisscrossing structures of social alliances in frontier societies (in the sense
of Kopytoff 1987, as discussed in Section 4) is striking. This suggests a possible long-
term research agenda that looks at the ways that patterns of language change align
with abstract social structures, and this may, in turn, allow for a more complete view
of language change in small-scale societies, in particular, than has been possible to
date.



Acknowledgements


We would like to acknowledge participants at the 11th Historical Sociolinguistics
Network Conference (University of Murcia), at the 4th Symposium on West African
Languages (University L’Orientale, Naples), and at a seminar offered by the second
author at the CNRS laboratory Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique, as well as two
anonymous reviewers for feedback on the work leading to the present version of this
paper. This work would also not have been possible without the support of numerous


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Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 3-1 (2023): 72-125


colleagues who we have collaborated with in the context of the KPAAM-CAM project
(https://kpaam-cam.org/). The research underlying the work described here has been
supported by US National Science Foundation Awards BCS-1360763, BCS-1761639
and BCS-2109620.


Abbreviations


 CLn   = noun class n                 IMPV   = imprfective             V   = verb base
 COM =    comitative                  IRR   = irrealis                 V   H
                                                                               = verb base associated with
 DET =   determiner                   P1    = hodiernal past           a high tone
 F1   = hodiernal future tense        P2    = pre-hodiernal            VIMPV     = imperfective
 F2   = post-hodiernal future tense   P3    = remote past              VIRR = irrealis   verb base
 F3   = remote future tense           PROG    = progressive aspect     L
                                                                           V   = verb base associated with
 FUT=    future tense                 PVB   = preverbal                a low tone


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CONTACT
pierpaol@buffalo.edu
jcgood@buffalo.edu




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