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Word tone and tonal overwriting in Kabiye nouns

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Abstract

This paper presents a re-analysis of the tone of Kabiye nouns. It focuses on two tonal phenomena that have apparently not been reported elsewhere in Gur languages: root melodies associating to whole words and tonal overwriting. All singular suffixes are analyzed as being underlyingly toneless and receiving their surface tone by means of the root melody associating to the entire word, as though blind to the morpheme boundary. Association of tones to trimoraic words is dealt with by positing that the OCP is inactive. The non-singular (plural, collective and liquid) suffixes – with one exception – are underlyingly HL. The analysis of these forms distinguishes between non-overwriting suffixes, in which the word level tone is merely the sum of its parts, and overwriting suffixes, in which the tone of the suffix overwrites the final tone(s) of the root melody.

Abbreviations

cl

noun class

col

collective

H

high tone

IP

imperfective present

L

low tone

liq

liquid

loc

locative

own

ownership

pl

plural

PP

possessive pronoun

rt

root

sg

singular

SP

subject pronoun

sx

suffix

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Published Online: 2016-6-15
Published in Print: 2016-6-1

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