Underlying low tones in Ruwund

In this paper the author examines data from Ruwund, a language with surface tone patterns often the reverse of those reconstructed for ProtoBantu, and proposes that, whereas most contemporary Bantu languages are believed to have tonal systems based on an underlying high/toneless contrast, Ruwund is...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Jay A. Nash
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
FR
Publicado: LibraryPress@UF 1994
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/4d00188b61f54520a8eb96b4a44114b3
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:In this paper the author examines data from Ruwund, a language with surface tone patterns often the reverse of those reconstructed for ProtoBantu, and proposes that, whereas most contemporary Bantu languages are believed to have tonal systems based on an underlying high/toneless contrast, Ruwund is based on a low/toneless contrast. Rules of tone spread and deletion apply to low tones rather than high tones, and the "default low insertion" rule of other languages is replaced in Ruwund by a rule adding default high tones. This finding is theoretically significant in that it contradicts Pulleyblank's [1986] proposal that "low" is always the default value in a two-tone language.