Abstract
The paper discusses how modern French loan nouns and verbs are morphophonologically adapted into Guinean Kpelle (Southwestern Mande), with a special focus on tone. To date, studies of prosodic loanword adaption from stress to tone languages have mainly focused on lexical tone assignment, largely neglecting other phenomena. This study contributes to the discussion by describing primary tone assignment of French loanwords in Guinean Kpelle, and, crucially, by exploring how loan words behave with respect to other complex morphophonological phenomena, mainly, prefixal and replacive grammatical tones, consonant alternations, and surface tone rules. My data suggest that loan nouns perfectly follow native Guinean Kpelle rules, whereas loan verbs have a distinct replacive {HL} morphological marker corresponding to {L} in native verbs. Distinct prosodic marking of loan verbs in Guinean Kpelle broadens our understanding of loanword typology, as well as of grammatical tone.
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