Abstract
This paper proposes an approach to bounded tone shift and spread as found in Bantu languages. Its core intuition is that the bounding domain is delimited by foot structure. The approach uses layered foot representations to capture ternary phenomena, following Martinez-Paricio & Kager (2015). A set of licensing and structural constraints regulate tone-foot interactions. Harmonic Serialism is adopted as the grammatical framework, to allow for an account of opaque patterns (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004; McCarthy 2010a).The present approach improves on previous accounts in two ways. Firstly, the size of the tonal bounding domain follows from independently motivated foot representations, rather than being stipulated in the constraint set. Secondly, the approach obviates the need for markedness constraints that refer to underlying structure, because all relevant lexical information is reflected in foot structures.The approach is demonstrated on Saghala (Patin 2009). Saghala shows both shift and spread in a trisyllabic domain. There are six tone patterns, dependent on the contact or near-contact of tones, and the position of word boundaries. An analysis is presented that accounts for all patterns. The success of the analysis shows that the foot-based approach is equipped to deal with a variety of bounded tone phenomena.
Highlights
Some Bantu languages display tone shift or spread, but only over a short distance
2.3 Harmonic Serialism In OT, foot-driven bounded tone shift is problematic, because it is opaque; a foot must be placed relative to the tone’s underlying position, and only after this has been achieved is the tone free to shift across the foot
This section will demonstrate the foot-based approach to bounded tone in HS using an abstract example of rightward binary tone shift, where a tone surfaces on the tone-bearing unit (TBU) to the right of its sponsor
Summary
Some Bantu languages display tone shift or spread, but only over a short distance. The target tone-bearing unit (TBU) for the shift or spread is at most a few Jeroen Breteler units away from the underlying position of the tone. The unit span across which tonal activity takes place is termed the bounding domain. There are no attested cases of e.g. quaternary shift or spread. Various OT approaches to the typology of Bantu bounded tone have since been proposed. Bickmore (1996) uses alignment constraints to derive a variety of bounded tone patterns. Two other approaches explore the merits of recasting tonal representations in featural domains: Optimal Domains Theory
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