Tone melodies in the age of surface correspondence

In this paper, we reexamine tone melody inventories in Mende, a landmark case study in the development of Autosegmental Phonology. We argue for adopting an approach couched within Agreement by Correspondence (ABC) Theory, in which tone melody inventories emerge naturally from the phonological grammar, rooted in independently-motivated principles of similarity and proximity with proven effects in segmental phenomena. The ABC-driven approach allows more fine-grained predictions in OT for the behavior of tone, and unites the analysis of tone and segmental patterns without the need for the representations and rule-based mechanisms of AP.