Les tons du dagara

Abstract

Dagara – involving three varieties : Wule, Lobr and Bιrfυɔr – is a voltaic language in which a number of linguistic phenomena found are not generalisable to the whole group of Gur Languages. Falling within the scope of phonology, this article has for its purpose to show the contribution of this language to General Linguistics by presenting some important features of use to the typologists. The article first concerns itself with the fact that the tone bearer in Dagara is not the syllable as suggested by the functionalist or the structuralo-functionalist view generally adopted within African Languages analysis, but the morpheme : each morpheme bears one tone. Secondly, we will prove that, contrary to the whole voltaic group, the Dagara language involves contrast between opaque and transparent consonants which occurs also in Kwa, Kru, Tchadic or Bantu groups and, beyond the African continent, in Southeast Asian languages groups as well. Lastly, we will show, concerning the internal low floating tones and the opaque consonants, that even if there is no synchronic evidence of link between them, they both involve the same syntactic implication, that is, they both prevent a preceding high tone from spreading.