Schedule StuTS 65

Tone in Bantu is subject to a variety of generalizations. This study focuses on grammatical tone and compares its behaviour between Bantu languages. I will investigate how grammatical tone interacts with the underlying tones and crucially how it differs from current generalizations for Bantu tone. These generalizations include preferences for edge positions, underrepresentation for low tones, OCP (obligatory contour principle) and spreading/shifting phenomena and dominance behaviour. This study aims to highlight that grammatical tone has to be treated differently from lexically occurring tone.
The following example from Kuria, a Bantu language spoken close to the Kenyan border in Tanzania, shows two grammatical tone patterns (1)

(1) a. n-to-re-hootóótér-a
Foc-1Pl-Tns-reassure-Fv
'We will reassure'
b. to-re-hootoótér-a
1Pl-Tns-reassure-Fv
'We are about to reassure'

In Kuria all verb stems are L toned in isolation. Interestingly, Kuria grammatical H tones do not follow edge preferences for tonal docking. Instead, H tones are realized on the 1rst mora (past), the second mora (past progressive), the third mora (1a. remote future) or the fourth mora (1b. inceptive). This observed trend exemplied in Kuria (further seen in Idakho and Xhosa) and additional evidence for special treatment of grammatical tone will be presented, laying the groundwork for a generalizing pattern for grammatical tone contrasting from general tonal realization.

Info

Day: 2019-05-25
Start time: 14:00
Duration: 00:30
Room: 100 / Hörsaal XXI
Track: Phonetics and Phonology
Language: en

Links:

• iCalendar

Files

• A_comparative_study_on_Bantu_grammatical_tone.pdf

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