Tone and the prosodic stem in Malawian CiTonga

Abstract

Abstract In CiTonga, a Bantu language spoken in northern Malawi, a number of different morphemes within the verbal complex can sponsor a High tone. While the High tone of a morpheme which precedes the stem is shown to be underlyingly pre-linked, those found after the beginning of the stem are argued to be underlyingly floating. This latter group of High tone autosegments can be shown to exclusively dock onto the first and last tone bearing units (TBUs) of the prosodic stem. This domain is not isomorphic with the morphological stem in that it must include the entire morphological stem as well as any of 3 different categories of enclitics which follow. The docking of the underlyingly floating Hs is shown to follow an edge-in process whereby a single H docks onto the initial TBU of the prosodic stem, a second H docks onto the final TBU of the prosodic stem, and any additional High tones remain floating, being phonologically inert. The paper provides an extensive range of newly presented data on this understudied Bantu language and constitutes a rare case of the prosodic stem being motivated by tonological factors.