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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in African linguistics 1994-06, Vol.23 (3)
Main Author: Jay A. Nash
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Proto-Bantu
Ruwund
tone
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:0039-3533
2154-428X