The Tonal System

Abstract

Abstract This chapter investigates the tonal system of Kimatuumbi, which is complicated in two ways. First, distinct constraints govern lexically unpredictable tone versus predictable tone in verbs, deverbal nouns, and deverbal adjectives. The tone system is thus composed of two partially intersecting subsystems. Second, at the underlying level only a single syllable in a morpheme is allowed to have an H-tone, but on the surface H seems to appear anywhere, subject to few constraints. This is the consequence of rules copying, adding, shifting, and deleting tones in various environments. In terms of a typology of tone, Kimatuumbi acts like an accentual or restricted tone system. Other well-known examples of accentual-type Bantu tone systems are Tonga (Goldsmith, 1984), Haya (Hyman and Byarushengo, 1984), Ciruri (Massamba, 1984) and Luganda (Hyman, 1982). In lacking lexical tones in verbs, Kimatuumbi is similar to Safwa, Kinga, Makua, and Kikuria. The tonal structure of the P-zone language Makua is discussed extensively in Cheng and Kisseberth (1979; 1980; 1981). See Odden (1989) for general discussion of these ‘predictable tone’ systems. In the first section we explore the lexical tone system, and in the second section we investigate the predictable tone system. A recurrent theme is that L-tones never enter into the picture directly-it is most convenient to specify where H-tones are assigned, leaving all other moras unspecified for tone until the end of the phonology, where they are assigned a phonetic L-tone.