In this paper I present and update some of the major points Russell Schuh and I made in our 1974 Linguistic Inquiry paper concerning universals of tone rules. Emphasis is on the distinction we made between synchronic and diachronic naturalness. Any diachronic change can be a synchronic rule while the reserve is not the case. We suggest(ed) that it is profitable to talk about natural synchronic rules that could not be (phonetically motivated) sound changes. This includes tone shifting, tonal polarity, and tonal downstep among possibly other commonly occurring tonal phenomena.

Underlying Representations and Bantu Segmental Phonology

Investigations into phonological differences between nouns and verbs focus almost exclusively on the lexical (word) level, showing that underlying contrasts are more numerous and stable (“faithful”) on nouns (Smith 1998, 1999). This raises the question of whether these (or other) alleged differences in word level phonology generalize to the nominal vs. verbal phrase. The Bantu family provides an ideal testing ground for such an investigation. Based on Bantu, I show that nouns are more likely to undergo modification at the phrase level than verbs, thereby obeying less “faithfulness” to the input than verbs. Nominal phrases also show more distinct outputs and complex idiosyncracies than their verbal counterparts. After establishing that there are distinct asymmetric properties in the phrasal phonology of nominal vs. verbal constituents in Bantu, I raise the question of what causes these asymmetries and whether they are general or pertain only to Bantu and other African languages.

In this paper I describe the tonal melodies of Lulamogi, a small understudied language of the Luganda-Lusoga cluster. Although Lulamogi has lost lexical contrast on verbs, as in most Bantu languages, it has a rich set of verbal melodies that are assigned on the basis of tense, aspect, mood, polarity and clause type (e.g. main vs. relative). Although focus is on the stem tone melodies, other complications arise from preceding prefixes which may shift their H tone onto the stem initial syllable. Since the system is quite different from that found in well-known Luganda, it is of particular interest for our understanding of the evolution of the tone systems of this subregion.

Lusoga Noun Phrase Tonology

On Reconstructing Tone in Proto-Niger-Congo