Sequences of high tones across word boundaries in Tswana

Sabine Zerbian,Frank Kügler

doi:10.1017/s0025100321000141

Abstract

The article analyses violations of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) above the word level in Tswana, a Southern Bantu language, by investigating the realization of adjacent lexical high tones across word boundaries. The results show that across word boundaries downstep (i.e. a lowering of the second in a series of adjacent high tones) only takes place within a phonological phrase. A phonological phrase break blocks downstep, even when the necessary tonal configuration is met. A phrase-based account is adopted in order to account for the occurrence of downstep. Our study confirms a pattern previously reported for the closely related language Southern Sotho and provides controlled, empirical data from Tswana, based on read speech of twelve speakers which has been analysed auditorily by two annotators as well as acoustically.

Highlights

IntroductionSome Bantu languages have lost tone (most notably Swahili), the vast majority of Bantu languages are two-tone languages with a surface high (H) and low (L) level tone
Some Bantu languages have lost tone, the vast majority of Bantu languages are two-tone languages with a surface high (H) and low (L) level tone
This section presents the results of the analysis of the mean f0 in the central 50% of the hightoned vowels H1 and H2. It starts out with representative illustrations, followed by descriptive statistics before it turns to testing the hypotheses inferentially

Summary

Introduction

Some Bantu languages have lost tone (most notably Swahili), the vast majority of Bantu languages are two-tone languages with a surface high (H) and low (L) level tone. The focus of the article is on the phonetic lowering of a lexical high tone due to the presence of a preceding high tone. This process is commonly referred to as downstep. Two adjacent high tones constitute a typical environment which violates the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP; Leben 1973) prohibiting identical adjacent elements. They violate the OCP they constitute the context for downstep. This study addresses the conditions for downstep in Tswana analysing it as a phrasal phenomenon

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion