Floating low tone and consonant voicing in Akebu

Abstract

The paper deals with floating low tone and consonant voicing in Akebu, historically induced by the nasal velar ŋ. The phenomena manifest in combination as nominal and agreement markers in a number of noun classes, as well as in independent pronouns. I argue against the analysis of paired voiced consonants as positional variants of their voiceless counterparts after the floating low tone found in the previous literature. This study proposes that floating low tone is considered only as a special case of the low tone and does not differ from the low tone on overt markers in any respect. Accordingly, paired voiced consonants are viewed as independent phonemes, while keeping in mind that they have acquired their phonemic status recently.