Date: 27-Jun-2005 From: Ulrich Lueders <lincom.europat-online.de> Subject: The Tonal Phonology of Jita: Downing
Title: The Tonal Phonology of Jita
Series Title: LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 0
Published: 2005
Publisher: Lincom GmbH
www.lincom.at
Author: Laura J. Downing, Research Centre for General Linguistics, Typology and Universals
Editor: Francis X. Katamba, Lancaster University
Paperback: ISBN: 3895860328 Pages: 240 Price: Europe EURO 74
Abstract:
This study presents a detailed analysis of the tone system of Jita, an Lacustrine Bantu language spoken in Tanzania, and also motivates a theory of the interaction of tone and accent in Bantu. The tone patterns of verbs, nouns and noun-modifier phrases are analyzed, and it is shown that much of the Jita tone system may be accounted for by non-metrical rules, i.e., rules which refer to the tonal properties only of immediately adjacent syllables. However, some tone patterns in Jita are derived from long-distance tone spread and (re)association rules. It is argued that these long-distance tone processes provide evidence for the interaction of tone and metrical prominence in Jita, since metrical structure is the only phonological device which allows long distance operations to be formulated so as to respect Locality.
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonology
Subject Language(s): Jita (JIT)
Language Family(ies): Bantu
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