Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:06:27.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Systems of Tone-Marking African Languages1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. N. Tucker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The following paper does not set out to be a comprehensive comparison of tonal systems—it is rather an account of my own experiences with various methods, with special reference to tone-marking in dictionaries and vocabularies. For this reason a certain amount of biographical detail is inevitable.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , October 1964 , pp. 594 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 There are already some excellent treatises on the subject; see especially Pike, K. L., Tone languages, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1948Google Scholar, and see also Welmers, W. E., ‘Tonemics, morphotonemics and tonal morphemes’, General Linguistics, IV, 1, 1959, 1–9Google Scholar, and the introductory section in Wängler, H.-H., Zur Tonologie des Hausa, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1963Google Scholar.

3 Non-tonal languages, such as Swahili, are outside the scope of this treatise.

4 ‘The science of tonetics and its application to Bantu languages’, Bantu Studies, II, 2, 1924, 75–106Google Scholar.

5 Following Laman's nine tone-points for Kongo, as set out in The musical accent or intonation in the Kongo language, Stockholm, 1922Google Scholar.

6 In this, and in his subsequent Xhosa work, he used rather than - for the sign of the High tone.

7 ‘Venda: tonal structure and intonation (part i)’, African Studies, XXI, 2, 1962, 51Google Scholar.

8 ZDMG, LV, 1901, 607–82Google Scholar.

9 ‘Die Verba des Ṭṣivẹṋḓa1’, MSOS, VII, 1904, 12–31Google Scholar. This was followed up much later by their ‘Wörterverzeichnis der Venda-Sprache’, Jahrbuch dtr Hamburgischer Wiss. Anstalten, XXXVI, 1918Google Scholar, and DrSchwellnus's, Paul E.Luvenda grammar ya u talukanya Tshivenda, Pretoria, [c. 1935]Google Scholar, and his Kima le kxaló le mešitó ya dirêtó ‘Weight, tone, and poetic diction’, Pretoria, 1942—this time in PediGoogle Scholar.

10 Thus possibly setting the pattern for Laman and Doke (see above).

11 Herein after referred to as Suto-Chuana.

12 First used by Jones in his Tones of Sechuana nouns (International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, Memorandum Vi), London, 1928Google Scholar.

13 ‘Sotho-Nguni orthography and tone-marking’, BSOAS, XIII, 1, 1949, 200–24Google Scholar.

14 ‘Step down’ was regarded as the normal feature of junction here, and therefore not indicated. Under ‘step up’ was to be understood a junction where the tone fails to step down; it may have the same level as the preceding High tone, though the general tendency is for the pitch to be slightly higher. (In subsequent works I reversed the words to ‘down step’ and ‘up step’ to conform with general usage.)

15 The book, which was published posthumously, unfortunately contains certain errors in printing, which render some parts of the tonal discussion unintelligible, and which the author, had he lived, would undoubtedly have corrected.

16 Exceptions are the Tshiveṋda-English dictionary, by van Warmelo, N. J., Pretoria, 1937Google Scholar, and the Zulu-English dictionary, by Doke, and Vilakazi, , Johannesburg, 1948Google Scholar, in which Doke's numbers are again placed above the words concerned; this practice, however, is largely dropped in the abridged English-Zulu dictionary of Doke, , Malcolm, , and Sikakana, , Johannesburg, 1958Google Scholar, apparently on grounds of economy.

17 Exemplified by the following works: Westphal, E. O. J., Kwangari: an index of lexical types, London, SOAS, 1958Google Scholar; idem, The sentence in Venda, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1955; idem, ‘Venda: tonal structure and intonation’, African Studies, XXI, 1962, 50–69, 123–73; Köhler, O., ‘Das Tonsystem des Verbum im Südsotho’, Mitt, des Inst. fur Orientforschung, IV, 3, 1956, 435–74Google Scholar; Beuchat, P.-D., ‘Tonomorphology of the Tsonga noun’, African Studies, XVIII, 3, 1959, 133–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Additional notes on the tonomorphology of the Tsonga noun’, African Studies, XXI, 3–4, 1962, 105–22 (these authors use the type of tone-marking described later in the present article); Sandilands, A., Introduction to Tswana, Tigerkloof, London Missionary Society, 1953Google Scholar(here the tone levels are indicated in some of the exercises by lines superimposed on and partly obscuring the text).

18 Westermann's linguistic activities cover a large period of time (1907 to 1961) and a large area of Africa, ranging from Ewe to Shilluk. There is no need to enumerate his publications here, but it is worth recording a note of appreciation on the policy of the German and Swiss Churches of last century, of sending eminent language scholars to their mission fields, who produced excellent studies of the local languages. Christaller is one example, Westermann another; in East Africa names such as Krapf and Meinhof are to this day held in respect.

19 e.g. e, o, the only exceptions being vowel length, shown by a macron, and nasalization, shown by a tilde. Christaller also used the Lepsius alphabet.

20 e.g. ε Ɔ, used in posthumous editions of Christaller's works.

21 Later known as the International African Institute.

22 Practical orthography of African languages, revised ed., London, OUP, 1930Google Scholar.

23 The phonetic and tonal structure of Efik, Cambridge, Heffer, 1933Google Scholar; An introduction to the Ibo language, Cambridge, Heffer. 1936Google Scholar; The pronunciation of Twi, Cambridge, Heffer, 1939Google Scholar. See also Crosby, K. H., An introduction to the study of Mende, Cambridge, Heffer, 1944Google Scholar.

24 Dictionary of the Asante and Fante language, second ed., Basel, 1933Google Scholar.

25 Taken from Schachter, P., ‘Phonetic similarity in tonemic analysis’, Language, XXXVII, 2, 1961, 231–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that the final lowered High tone is lower in pitch than the initial Low tone.

26 Stevick, E. W. and Machiwana, Kingston, Manyika step by step, Cleveland, Transvaal, 1960Google Scholar.

27 Redden, J. E. and Owusu, N., Twi basic course, Washington, D.C., 1963Google Scholar.

28 I shall return later to the principles underlying the unmarking of syllables—or ‘zero tone-marking’ as it was later called.

29 Abraham's Falling tone mark here, and his Rising tone mark in Tiv, (⋏represent ‘an arrow pointing downwards’ and ‘an arrow pointing upward’ respectively, and are intended to suggest automatically to the reader the direction of tone movement.

30 Cantonese primer, Cambridge, Mass., 1947Google Scholar.

31 The new official Chinese Latin script: Gwoyeu romatzyh, London, Probsthain, 1942Google Scholar.

32 Chinese sentence series, London, Probsthain, 1942–1944 (with Simon)Google Scholar.

33 ‘A transcription for Cantonese’, BSOAS, XIII, 3, 1950, 725–45Google Scholar.

34 Structure drill in Cantonese, London, Lund Humphries, 1954Google Scholar.

35 Only a few of the many meanings of the words cited are given here.

36 Outstanding names here (in chronological order) are: Whitehead, Lekens, Hulstaert, Burssens, Carrington, Stappers, Willems, Meeussen, de Boeck, van Avermaet, Coupez, Larochette, Mamet, Maes, Ntahokaja, Rodegem, Bapfutwabo, Jacobs, Kamanzi, van den Eynde, Kadima, Matsene, de Witte, Hagendorens, Kagame, Rood, Vansina; and new names are for ever appearing in the prodigious output from this field.

37 In Notes on the tonal system of Northern Rhodesian Plateau Tonga, London, HMSO, 1962Google Scholar. Note that, whereas most writers place the down step symbol ! before the syllable concerned, Mrs. Carter places it before the vowel letter, because in the language she studied the pitch of the consonants b and m is the same as that of the preceding vowel.

38 In ‘Morphotonology of the Tonga verb’, Journal of African Languages, II, 1, 1963, 72–92Google Scholar.

39 See particularly The Eastern Sudanic languages, I, London, OUP, 1940Google Scholar.

40 op. cit., ch. iii and xviii. For the benefit of those unversed in this method of recording, the following are the values in the chromatic scale I used: d de r re m f fe S si 1 ta t d'.

41 See Ashton, , Mulira, , Ndawula, , and Tucker, , A Luganda grammar, London, Longmans, Green, 1954Google Scholar; also Kitching, and Blackledge, , A Luganda-English and English-Luganda dictionary (revised by Mulira and Ndawula), London, SPCK, 1952Google Scholar. D. T. Cole, in ‘Some features of Ganda linguistic structure’ (cyclostyled 1964), marks both High and Low tone.

42 See Taylor, C., A simplified Runyanlcore-Rukiga-English and English-Bunyankore-Rukiga dictionary, Kampala, Eagle Press, 1959Google Scholar.

43 With this distinction that the normal down step symbol! could not be used in Luganda because of its possible confusion with the apostrophe demanded by the standard orthography; the stroke / was used instead.

44 Which, however, would be wrong, as Low toneme may also occur in this position.

45 op. cit.

46 Dictionnaire lomóngo-franÇais, Tervuren, 1957Google Scholar.

47 The High toneme syllable 'zi, having a voiced initial consonant, has a pitch pattern shortened to _, whereas the Low toneme syllable hla, having an unvoiced initial consonant, has descending pitch (hard to distinguish from Falling tone) in this context.

48 See Meeussen, A. E., Essai de grammaire rundi, Tervuren, 1959Google Scholar.

49 See Coupez, A., Grammaire rwanda simplifiée, Usumbura, 1961Google Scholar.

50 Example supplied by Meeussen, who uses double vowels to indicate syllable length; in those systems where double vowels are not used, different conventions are found with Rodegem, Ntahokaja, and Kagame to indicate the various tones on long as opposed to short syllables.

51 See also his The role of tone in the structure of Sukùma, London, SOAS, 1959Google Scholar.

52 Tones of Sechuana nouns, 14.

53 Suto-Chuana,108; ‘Sotho-Nguni’, 216. An antepenultimate High tone causes lowering of a final High tone when the word stands in isolation, but not when it stands as Subject.