Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Disentangling conjoint, disjoint, metatony, tone cases, augments, prosody, and focus in Bantu

Larry M. Hyman
2017

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle a number of overlapping concepts that have been invoked in Bantu studies to characterize the relation between a verb and what follows it. Starting with the conjoint/disjoint distinction, I then consider its potential relation to “metatony”, “tone cases”, “augments”, prosody, and focus in Bantu.

Reconstructing the Niger-Congo verb extension paradigm: What's cognate, copied, or renewed?

Larry M. Hyman
2014

It is generally assumed that Proto-Niger-Congo (PNC) had a well-developed paradigm of verb-to-verb derivational suffixes known as verb extensions (Voeltz 1977, Hyman 2007). Based on their effect on valence, specific language studies identify three types of extensions: valence increasing (e.g. causative, applicative, associative, instrumental), valence decreasing (e.g. reciprocal, reflexive, decausative, passive, stative) and valence neutral (e.g. intensive, attenuative, pluractional). Sometimes also implicated in the suffix system are inflectional suffixes marking aspect (e.g. (im)...

Towards a typology of postlexical tonal neutralizations

Larry M. Hyman
2018

Specialists of accentual systems are well aware that word-based prominences often neutralize, and hence fail to receive full phonetic realization at the phrase level. At the same time, specialists of tone systems are equally aware that lexical tonal contrasts may also be neutralized at the phrase level by a number of processes, some of which are quite suggestive of “accentual “ behavior, In this talk I attempt to provide a typology of postlexical tonal neutralizations. I begin by distinguishing the different domains within which such processes take place, e.g. derived word and clitic...

Towards a typology of tone system changes

Larry M. Hyman
2018

Most general discussions of tonal change are concerned with the issues of tonogenesis and tonal splits, i. e. the questions of how non-tonal languages become tonal and how these tones later split to produce more tones. In this article I am concerned with two issues: (i) how tone systems acquire more tonal contrasts; (ii) how tone systems lose tonal contrasts. The first issue concerns both laryngeal factors as well as the natural pitch effects that tones have on each other. The second concerns both tonal mergers as well as the restriction of tonal contrasts to certain positions of the...

The autosegmental approach to tone in Lusoga

Larry M. Hyman
2018

One of the major contributions of John Goldsmith’s autosegmental approach to tone was its application to Bantu. Both in his own work and in the work he coedited in Clements & Goldsmith (1984), a new way was opened up to account for the often opaque relationship between underlying vs. surface H(igh) and L(ow) tonal representations. Goldsmith’s work on Tonga and Sukuma, for instance, involved accents which he specified with asterisks and a tonal melody (HL vs. LH, respectively) that required specific mapping. In other work, e.g. on Kirundi, a different metrical analysis of...

Underlying representations and Bantu segmental phonology

Larry M. Hyman
2021

A number of phonologists have claimed that we don’t need underlying representations (URs) in phonology. The arguments against URs come from a number of sources which variously appear to accuse URs of being either wrong (speakers don’t “know” them), redundant (we have other mechanisms to deal with the facts that have motivated URs), or insufficient (much more is stored in lexical entries than “just” URs). The basic question is whether lexical entries have URs that are not identical to their surface pronunciations, e.g. in isolated words. While this is easier to show when there is an...

On reconstructing tone in Proto-Niger-Congo

Larry M. Hyman
2020

In this paper I trace tonal correspondences between the widely accepted reconstructed tones of Proto-Bantu lexical morphemes (Meeussen 1980, Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3) outside of Narrow Bantu proper. From the reconstructions of Proto-Grassfields Bantu (Hyman 1979, Elias et al 1984) we know that that the tones of noun stems and verb roots largely correspond (but with some differences), and we suspect that this may be true in other subgroups within Bantoid. The question which we propose to address in this paper is: How far out from Bantu and Bantoid do these tones reliably...

Word prosody II: Tone systems.

Larry M. Hyman
William R. Leben
2021

This chapter aims to capture the diversity of tone languages by presenting the various canonical types of behavior of tone systems along with some known deviations from what is considered the norm. Tone systems have many interesting properties beyond the commonly cited ones (number of contrastive tone heights, presence or absence of contour tones, nature of the tone-bearing unit—syllable, mora etc.). For example, many languages of East Asia and Southeast Asia have what we are calling “tone packages”: these include not only a tone (i.e. based on pitch) but accompanying phonation...

Niger-Congo linguistic features and typology

Larry M. Hyman
Nicholas R. Rolle
Hannah L. Sande
Emily C. Clem
Peter Jenks
Florian A. J. Lionnet
John Merrill
Nico Baier
2019

In this chapter, we will outline the major phonological, morphological, and syntactic properties of Niger-Congo, paying attention especially to areas of particular typological interest. We will start by discussing two problems: (i) disagreement over what is Niger-Congo; (ii) linguistic features are rarely limited to Niger-Congo (except perhaps noun classes). Our attention will be particularly on the following topics: (i) Consonant systems, usual and unusual systems, e.g. implosives, labiovelars; (ii) vowel systems, especially ATR and nasal contrasts on vowels; (iii) tone and accent:...

What is phonological typology?

Larry M. Hyman
2018

In this contribution I raise the question of what phonological typology is, can, or should be. I start by asking what linguistic typology is and then turn to the problem: Despite the intellectual overlap, there is rare cross-communication in the study of sound systems by phonologists vs. typologists. Despite earlier contributions by Trubetzkoy, Jakobson, Martinet, Greenberg and others, and its inclusion in even earlier efforts towards “holistic” typology, phonological typology is often underrepresented or even excluded in typology textbooks. At the same time, many, if not most...