How to Study a Tone Language, with Exemplification from Oku (Grassfields Bantu, Cameroon)

Issues about tone rules in Xitshwa

“…That is, only L should be specified while H should remain underspecified. However, Hyman (2010) observes that the L vs Ø contrast, although confirmed for some languages, is very rare. In this analysis, we do not take a strong position on this matter, but assuming that only High tones are active in Xitshwa, we propose to specify High tone with acute accents (΄), while syllables with Low tones will be underspecified, yielding a H vs Ø system.…”

“…Several accounts on Bantu languages also suggest that Low tones do not play any role in the Phonological Component and that only H should be specified (Downing & Mtenje 2017, Hyman 2010, Hyman & Ngunga 1994, Marlo 2016, Odden 1998, Polleto 1998. Ngunga & Faquir (2011) have suggested that the contrast between H vs L in Xitshwa should be L vs Ø.…”

“…As it is also common in other Bantu languages, it has been shown that in Xitshwa tone plays both a lexical and a grammatical role. The Bantu literature generally assumes that the H vs L contrast can be lexically expressed as H vs Ø (Kula & Braun 2015, Hyman 2010.…”

The phonetics and phonology of Uspanteko (Mayan)

“…Final intonational rises are common in our wordlist data, likely as a result of eliciting words in a repeated frame sentence. In such tasks, the target word is pragmatically or metalinguistically focussed, and may be produced with intonation characteristic of a full, independent utterance or IP (Himmelmann, 2006; Himmelmann & Ladd, 2008; Hyman, 2014; Jun & Fletcher, 2014; Pike, 1948; Snider, 2014; Yu, 2014). A particularly dramatic example is shown in Figure 36.…”