Tuesday 15:30
Floating Tones and Dialect Formation in Medumba, a Grassfields Language
Kathryn Franich
The system of floating tones in Medumba (Bamileke), a Grassfields Bantoid language of
Cameroon, was proposed by Voorhoeve (1965; 1971) and Hyman (1976; 2003) to explain
unusual surface tone patterns in the language. Originating from tones historically realized on
segments now lost, these unassociated tones can spread to other toneless segments and can
cause downstep when realized in a sequence of H(L)H (‘high, floating low, high’). This study
presents new data collected in Cameroon from 19 speakers of Medumba ages 18-72
evidencing change in the tonal system since Voorhoeve’s fieldwork 40 years ago.
Findings indicate that a new dialect of Medumba has emerged among speakers
typically aged under 45 years wherein downstep is applied uniformly after nouns that
historically (and up until at least the 1980s) represented two distinct underlying tone types,
where only one type could trigger downstep on a subsequent high tone. This suggests a
merging of the two classes of nouns into one class. This type of tone assimilation is
commonly described diachronically in the literature on African languages, but few studies
have looked in-depth at change in progress.
Additional data from relative clauses suggests that patterns like downstep, once
exclusively represented through interactions of individual tones, may sometimes result from
larger, generalized tone patterns conditioned by higher-level grammatical constituents. Tone
rules may apply differently at lexical and prosodic word levels or at phrase boundaries.
This study examines historical evidence from Medumba and other Grassfields
languages, internal factors like morphosyntactic status of relevant particles and prosodic
boundaries within which they occur, as well as external factors like age and register, to
explain patterns of variation. It aims to show that variation in tone is similar to that found
with other phonological features, and that studying tone variation can provide insight into
how different prosodic systems are related.
References:
Hyman, L.M., M Tadadjeu. (1976). Floating tones in Mbam-Nkam. Studies in African
Linguistics.
Hyman, L.M. (2003). Why describe African languages? Keynote Address: World Congress
of African Linguistics 4/Annual Conferences on African Linguistics 34 Rutgers, June 18,
2003.
Voorhoeve, J. (1965). The Structure of the Morpheme in Bamileke (Bangangte dialect).
Lingua 13. 319–334.
Voorhoeve, J. (1971). Tonology of the Bamileke Noun. Journal of African Languages 10.
44–53.
Yip, M. (2002). Tone. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.