High and low tone in Taa (!Xóõ) (original) (raw)

Traill (1977, 1985) has described Taa (ǃXóõ, ǃXoon) as a tonally complex language with two tonal categories, i.e. (1) four lexical tones (high, mid-falling, mid, low) and (2) two distinct tonal phrases for concordially determined forms. He regards the monosyllabic or bisyllabic base as the unit to which lexical tone is assigned. Miller-Ockhuizen (1998) reanalyses these data and claims the existence of four distinct tone levels (super high, high, low, super low) with the mora as tone bearing unit and the absence of phonological contours. In this paper, which is based on acoustic data from the two varieties that are spoken in Namibia, West ǃXoon and 'Nǀohan, it will be shown that there is no need to assume more than two tonemes - high and low - being associated to morae in order to represent and analyse tonal phenomena of the language.