Floating tones in Ga

Floating tones in Ga

This paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. As will be shown, floating tones are crucial to an analysis of verbal tense/aspect/mood distinctions. I begin by describing two tonal processes, the HL rule and Plateauing. While these are regular proces...

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Autor principal: Mary Paster
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
FR
Publicado: LibraryPress@UF 2003
Materias:
tone
Ga
Kwa
floating tones
aspect
mood
Philology. Linguistics
P1-1091
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/9b078647b9754e70b76ebd76bbd52669
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:9b078647b9754e70b76ebd76bbd526692021-11-19T03:53:23ZFloating tones in Ga10.32473/sal.v32i1.1073450039-35332154-428Xhttps://doaj.org/article/9b078647b9754e70b76ebd76bbd526692003-06-01T00:00:00Zhttps://journals.flvc.org/sal/article/view/107345https://doaj.org/toc/0039-3533https://doaj.org/toc/2154-428XThis paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. As will be shown, floating tones are crucial to an analysis of verbal tense/aspect/mood distinctions. I begin by describing two tonal processes, the HL rule and Plateauing. While these are regular processes of the language, both are blocked in the perfective. I show that the blockage is the result of a floating low tone that marks the perfective, and that the floating tone marker explains other anomalous tonal effects in the perfective. I then give an analysis of floating tone prefixes that mark certain tenses/aspects/moods by associating to the subject prefix, thus overwriting the lexical tone of the subject prefix. Finally, I give examples of suffixed floating that mark tense/aspect/mood by associating to verb stems, causing the underlying stem tones to delink. In these tenses/aspects/moods, we find evidence for an underlying L vs. toneless contrast, constituting another phenomenon where, as with floating tones, there is a mismatch between the number of tones and tonebearing units. Thus, a major prediction of Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith 1976, Clements and Ford 1979) is borne out in Ga.Mary PasterLibraryPress@UFarticletoneGaKwafloating tonesaspectmoodPhilology. LinguisticsP1-1091ENFRStudies in African Linguistics, Vol 32, Iss 1 (2003)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
FR
topic tone
Ga
Kwa
floating tones
aspect
mood
Philology. Linguistics
P1-1091
spellingShingle tone
Ga
Kwa
floating tones
aspect
mood
Philology. Linguistics
P1-1091
Mary Paster
Floating tones in Ga
description This paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. As will be shown, floating tones are crucial to an analysis of verbal tense/aspect/mood distinctions. I begin by describing two tonal processes, the HL rule and Plateauing. While these are regular processes of the language, both are blocked in the perfective. I show that the blockage is the result of a floating low tone that marks the perfective, and that the floating tone marker explains other anomalous tonal effects in the perfective. I then give an analysis of floating tone prefixes that mark certain tenses/aspects/moods by associating to the subject prefix, thus overwriting the lexical tone of the subject prefix. Finally, I give examples of suffixed floating that mark tense/aspect/mood by associating to verb stems, causing the underlying stem tones to delink. In these tenses/aspects/moods, we find evidence for an underlying L vs. toneless contrast, constituting another phenomenon where, as with floating tones, there is a mismatch between the number of tones and tonebearing units. Thus, a major prediction of Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith 1976, Clements and Ford 1979) is borne out in Ga.
format article
author Mary Paster
author_facet Mary Paster
author_sort Mary Paster
title Floating tones in Ga
title_short Floating tones in Ga
title_full Floating tones in Ga
title_fullStr Floating tones in Ga
title_full_unstemmed Floating tones in Ga
title_sort floating tones in ga
publisher LibraryPress@UF
publishDate 2003
url https://doaj.org/article/9b078647b9754e70b76ebd76bbd52669
work_keys_str_mv AT marypaster floatingtonesinga
_version_ 1718420567325933568

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