LSAL 05: The Tonal Phonology of Jita

The Tonal Phonology of Jita

Laura J. Downing
University of Pennsylvania

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.

Edited by Francis Katamba University of Lancaster.

ISBN 9783895860324. LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 05. 240pp. 1996.