Word tone and tonal overwriting in Kabiye nouns

Roberts, D. H.

doi:10.1515/jall-2016-0004

Cited by 33 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The rest of this section examines studies that touch on causative constructions in Mabia, how they characterise the causative patterns, the extent of coverage of the topic and what relations may be established with the Likpakpaanl causative patterns. Roberts (2019) examines tone in Kabiye (a Mabia member spoken in Northern Togo) verbal extensions. In the process, he identifies a suffix -s as having a causativising value.…”

Section: Studies On Causation In Mabiamentioning

confidence: 99%

causative construction in Likpakpaanl (Konkomba)

Bisilki

2024

sal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article is a contribution to the cross-linguistic discussion on causation. It proceeds on the note that causation is a significant notion, both cognitively and grammatically. I make a case that the Mabia (Gur) languages of West Africa are severely under-represented in the literature on causation. I then focus on causation in Likpakpaanl, an under-researched Mabia language spoken in Ghana and Togo in West Africa. I further present data from thirteen other related West African languages for comparative purposes. Broadly speaking, Likpakpaanl deploys all the traditional causation strategies- lexical, morphological, serialising and analytic. However, the use of nasals, especially vowel nasality as a causativisers is novel and uniquely places Likpakpaanl among its linguistic relatives. The Likpakpaanl analytic causative marker chà has a functional scope for both factitive and permissive causatives. In a sense, the source of the specialised analytic causative marker in Likpakpaanl diverges from the oft-cited cross-linguistic source of analytic causative markers. The Likpakpaanl biclausal causative is the balanced structure and, therefore, aligns well with the biclausal causative structure described for the West African linguistic area, contra the deraked structure of Indo-European languages. A thorough investigation of the constellation of causatives in Mabia promises new insights into causative typology.

show abstract

Section: Studies On Causation In Mabiamentioning

confidence: 99%

causative construction in Likpakpaanl (Konkomba)

Bisilki

2024

sal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The second process that provides putative evidence of the syllable as TBU concerns the data already presented in (4h) and (8d). Roberts (2016;2019;2021) refers to it as "post-lexical HLH plateauing" and Lébikaza (1999:57f.) as "assimilation verticale".…”

Section: Figure 5 -Syllabic and Moraic Formalisations Of Vocalic Elisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moraic tone-bearing units in Kabiye

Roberts¹

2022

lla

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article provides evidence that the mora, rather than the syllable, is the tone-bearing unit in Kabiye, an Eastern Gurunsi Gur language of Togo. After presenting the phoneme inventory and a brief overview of the tone system, the concept of phonological weight is introduced in order to precisely characterise the mora and the syllable in this language, as well as the relationship between them. Two observations provide evidence in favour of the mora as the tone-bearing unit: first, contour tones are licenced on heavy syllables but not on light ones; second, tonal processes are sensitive to a unit smaller than the syllable, such that the second constituent of a heavy syllable operates with a degree of independence relative to the first. These observations are explored in four phonological domains: association of the LHL tone pattern, association of two-tone patterns, L tone spreading, and vocalic elision. Two post-lexical processes -contour realignment and HLH plateauing -provide putative evidence of the syllable as tone-bearing unit, but even in these cases, a moraic account is ultimately judged to be preferable.

show abstract

“…In the last two and a half decades, there has been a surge of in-depth descriptive and analytic work on such patterns of grammatical tone (hereafter GT). In Africa, a sample of families in which GT is pervasive include Dogon (Heath 2008; McPherson 2014; McPherson & Heath 2016), Mabia/Gur (Hyman & Olawsky 2003; Roberts 2016), Mande (McPherson 2017, 2019; Green 2018; Konoshenko 2018), Ijoid (Efere 2001; Harry 2004; Harry & Hyman 2014; Rolle 2021), Bantu (Odden & Bickmore 2014) and Nilotic (Andersen 1995; Trommer 2011), among others. Extensive work on GT has been conducted outside of Africa, as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical approaches to grammatical tone

Lionnet,

McPherson,

Rolle

2022

Phonology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tone is distinct from other phonological phenomena both qualitatively and quantitatively (Hyman 2011), and has been instrumental in shaping phonological theory in many ways. However, the contributions to current linguistic theory of “grammatical tone’ (GT) – a type of non-concatenative morphology where a morpheme is expressed at least in part by tone and/or tone changes – have been less apparent. In this paper, we take stock of the types of GT patterns attested in the literature and the different theoretical treatments of GT that have been proposed to date. We show that GT is still to a large extent underexplored, and highlight the immense potential of the study of GT for improving our understanding of phonology and its outer limits. This paper serves as an introduction to the high-quality research articles collected in this special issue, which directly address how GT critically informs phonological theory and its current developments.

show abstract

Word tone and tonal overwriting in Kabiye nouns

Cited by 33 publications

References 7 publications

causative construction in Likpakpaanl (Konkomba)

causative construction in Likpakpaanl (Konkomba)

Moraic tone-bearing units in Kabiye

Theoretical approaches to grammatical tone

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About