Tonal System of Looma Language : The Woi-Balagha Dialect (original) (raw)
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The speech sounds, syllable structure and tone system of a less-studied West African language, Lɛtɛ
MERCY AKROFI ANSAH, 2022
The paper describes the speech sounds, syllable structure and tone system of a less-studied, West African language, Lɛtɛ. Lɛtɛ is a South-Guan language of Ghana, West Africa, and genetically affiliated to the Niger-Congo family of languages. Eberhard, Simons and Fennig (2019) sub-classifies Guan (Niger-Congo, Kwa) into two language clusters: North Guan and South Guan, to which Lɛtɛ belongs. Lɛtɛ has a symmetrical set of nine vowels, 4 front vowels produced with an advanced tongue root position and four back vowels produced with a retracted tongue root position. The ninth vowel is a low central vowel, /ǝ /, which is produced with an advanced tongue root position, but unpaired. Its vowel and consonant systems are akin to those of related African languages. The study was purely field-based. Data were collected through elicitation from language speakers who resided in the speech community. Speech sounds and tone patterns were audio recorded and later transcribed and analysed. Tongue root vowel harmony controls vowel distribution to a large measure. A single syllable may be constituted by a vowel, a consonant followed by a vowel (CV), or a nasal consonant. The lexical tone helps to distinguish meaning, whereas the grammatical tone functions to mark tense and aspectual distinctions. It was observed that in many respects, aspects of Lɛtɛ phonology described are akin to other Kwa languages in the Niger-Congo family.
The Syntax of Tone in Guinean Kpelle
In this paper I study the interaction between prosodic and syntactic structure in Guinean Kpelle, an underdescribed Southwestern Mande tonal language spoken in West Africa, Republic of Guinea. I argue that tone rules in Guinean Kpelle are strongly sensitive to morphosyntactic structure, and in most cases prosodic structure can be derived from syntactic structure in this language.
A Tonal Identification of Yoruba Dialects
Dialectologia, 2021
This article studies variations in the realisation of contour tones in Oyo, Ibadan, Ife, Igbomina, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ilorin, and Onko dialects of Yoruba and reports that the dialects exploit different dimensions of contour tone realisation to distinguish themselves. Ife, Igbomina and Ijesa dialects reduce the frequency of contour tones via high tone lowering and contour levelling, whereas Ijebu dialect multiplies contours in several ways. For instance, where the other dialects have MH and HH sequences, Ijebu has LH [LR], which increases its frequency of contour tones. In addition, Ijebu is the only dialect in which the M participates in contour tone formation whereby, ML sequence is realised MMU L. On the other extreme, Onko does not realise the falling contour at all. It is consequently argued that these dissimilarities between tonal contours are key indicators of dialectal variations among Yoruba dialects and they are more discernible than segmental and other grammatical indicators that have been more widely studied.
JOLAN: Journal of the Linguistics Association of Nigeria, 2021
Abstract This study comparatively examines the tonal structures of Akuapem Twi and Asante Twi. It precisely focuses on examining syntactic structures with similar tonal structures as well as those with different tonal structures in both dialects from an acoustic perspective. Subsidiary to the acoustic evidence, a further autosegmental formalization of the syntactic structures with different tonal structures are analyzed to demonstrate the phonological and tonal rules triggering the differences. The mean of the pitch values of three (3) Akuapem Male Speakers and three (3) Akuapem Female speakers are compared with the Asante mean values identified in pronouncing the same syntactic structures tokens. The age range of speakers recorded is 20-60 years. Graphs showing the PRAAT pitch values show the syntactic structures with similar as well as different tonal structures in both dialects. The paper concludes with the proposal that as a result of some tonal and phonological rules, syntactic structures such as pronominals and HḶH nouns, HL nouns, imperative verbs and a CV pronominal objects as well as pronominals and negative verbs with a CV post-position all have different tonal structures in both dialects.
2009
This article describes and analyses the verbal tone system of Khayo, a previously undocumented dialect of Luyia (Bantu, Kenya and Uganda, J.30). It provides a systematic account of the tonal marking of tense-aspect-mood-polarity and clause type distinctions on verbs as well as tonal alternations triggered by H-toned prefixes and by prosodic differences in the verb stem. The primary analytical challenge posed by the Khayo data is accounting for cross-melody differences in the application of tonal rules; there are many contexts in which rules motivated for one melody fail to apply in another melody, even though the phonological environment is met. The analysis here accounts for these differences as the result of morphologically specific tonal rules ordered differently with respect to general tonal rules in a single tonal grammar.
Consonant Types and Pitch of Tone in the Igbo Language: An Acoustic Analysis
This work sets out to analyze the pitch of tone in lexemes in the Igbo language to find out the effect of consonant types occurring before vowels on the pitch of the tone of the vowels. The data are collected from two males and two females from each dialect using structured personal interview and the data recorded electronically. In the findings the pitch of the vowels following plosives are higher than those following other classes of consonants. Also the tone of the vowel does not affect the F0 of the tone. Finally the downstepped high tone does not have influence on the pitch of the vowel. We therefore conclude that the downstepped high tone in the Igbo language in line with what is found in the literature, consonant types do have effect on the pitch of tone of following vowels.