Spurious high-tone extensions in Luganda
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Date
1990
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South African Journal of African Languages
Abstract
A handful of mostly older descriptions of Bantu tone systems note an unexpected H tone effect on verb
stems containing a causative -j- or passive -u- extension. Meeussen cites these effects as archaic and
reconstructs H tone on these vocalic suffixes in Proto-Bantu. It has been difficult to evaluate this historical
claim, since not all Bantu tone systems exhibit what we are calling 'spurious H-tone extensions', and still
fewer of these have been described in detail. In this article we present a reasonably complete description of
spurious H-tone effects in Luganda, demonstrating that spurious H can (and must) appear only when these
extensions occur on a 'modified base' (<PB • -p-e) verb form in an inflectional frame that independently
requires a H tone suffix. We suggest that the unexpected additional H tone is not underlyingly on the vocalic
suffixes, but rather has the status of an enclitic in synchronic Luganda. We hypothesize that spurious H is a
relic of an earlier stage of Bantu when the verb stem had not yet been completely forged into a single unit.
This allows us to provide a diachronic account both of its present-day distribution and of two other effects its
presence has on the verb: obligatory final -a instead of the more usual -e of the modified base, and blocking
of tone-group formation when it would otherwise occur.
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Keywords
Spurious high-tone extensions, Luganda
Citation
Larry M. Hyman & Francis X. Katamba (1990) Spurious high-tone extensions in Luganda, South African Journal of African Languages, 10:4, 142-158, DOI: 10.1080/02572117.1990.10586847