Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang

Tonal alternations in the Bantu language Kenyang appear on first consideration to be rather complicated but yield to analysis into a small number of rules, which reveal interesting properties of floating tones, contour tones, and the tone-bearing unit in the language. This study focuses on the follo...

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Autor principal:	David Odden
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	LibraryPress@UF 1988
Materias:	tone Kenyang Bantu phonetics downgliding Philology. Linguistics P1-1091
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/6d9b0fee011543d9af10b2e5de01bf2b
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:6d9b0fee011543d9af10b2e5de01bf2b2021-11-19T03:54:53ZFloating tones and contour tones in Kenyang10.32473/sal.v19i1.1074670039-35332154-428Xhttps://doaj.org/article/6d9b0fee011543d9af10b2e5de01bf2b1988-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://journals.flvc.org/sal/article/view/107467https://doaj.org/toc/0039-3533https://doaj.org/toc/2154-428XTonal alternations in the Bantu language Kenyang appear on first consideration to be rather complicated but yield to analysis into a small number of rules, which reveal interesting properties of floating tones, contour tones, and the tone-bearing unit in the language. This study focuses on the following problems. First, there is a phonetic contrast, found only at the end of the utterance, between the downgliding L of eket and the unreleased L of basemo. Unreleased L will be shown to derive from rising tone. Second, I argue that syllable final consonants may be tone-bearing, a claim supported by analysis of tone alternations resulting from postlexical resyllabification. Third, Kenyang uses floating L prefixes to form morphological verb tense distinctions. There is a behavioral contrast between the free L tone marking the progressive, which triggers downstep and blocks a spreading rule, versus the free L used in the recent past, which docks to the first root vowel, thereby causing the root tone to shift rightward. The analytic problem is to find a way to represent these two types of floating L. The distinction can be handled by assigning them to different levels of the lexical phonology, so that the shift-inducing L is added when verb roots are inserted, but the float-only L is added at a later stratum-. Finally, I show that the interaction between the two rules H Spreading and Fall Simplification provides evidence for the cyclic application of postlexical rules.David OddenLibraryPress@UFarticletoneKenyangBantuphoneticsdownglidingPhilology. LinguisticsP1-1091ENFRStudies in African Linguistics, Vol 19, Iss 1 (1988)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	tone Kenyang Bantu phonetics downgliding Philology. Linguistics P1-1091
spellingShingle	tone Kenyang Bantu phonetics downgliding Philology. Linguistics P1-1091 David Odden Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang
description	Tonal alternations in the Bantu language Kenyang appear on first consideration to be rather complicated but yield to analysis into a small number of rules, which reveal interesting properties of floating tones, contour tones, and the tone-bearing unit in the language. This study focuses on the following problems. First, there is a phonetic contrast, found only at the end of the utterance, between the downgliding L of eket and the unreleased L of basemo. Unreleased L will be shown to derive from rising tone. Second, I argue that syllable final consonants may be tone-bearing, a claim supported by analysis of tone alternations resulting from postlexical resyllabification. Third, Kenyang uses floating L prefixes to form morphological verb tense distinctions. There is a behavioral contrast between the free L tone marking the progressive, which triggers downstep and blocks a spreading rule, versus the free L used in the recent past, which docks to the first root vowel, thereby causing the root tone to shift rightward. The analytic problem is to find a way to represent these two types of floating L. The distinction can be handled by assigning them to different levels of the lexical phonology, so that the shift-inducing L is added when verb roots are inserted, but the float-only L is added at a later stratum-. Finally, I show that the interaction between the two rules H Spreading and Fall Simplification provides evidence for the cyclic application of postlexical rules.
format	article
author	David Odden
author_facet	David Odden
author_sort	David Odden
title	Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang
title_short	Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang
title_full	Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang
title_fullStr	Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang
title_full_unstemmed	Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang
title_sort	floating tones and contour tones in kenyang
publisher	LibraryPress@UF
publishDate	1988
url	https://doaj.org/article/6d9b0fee011543d9af10b2e5de01bf2b
work_keys_str_mv	AT davidodden floatingtonesandcontourtonesinkenyang
_version_	1718420557158940672

Floating tones and contour tones in Kenyang

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