{"title":"The Typology of Tone and Cushitic","authors":"M. Mous","doi":"10.5842/62-0-898","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The current dimensions in the typology of tone are not insightful for understanding the properties of tone in Cushitic languages. Some Cushitic languages are characterised as “pitch-accent” and these cannot be considered stress languages because the criterion of obligatoriness of every word having a stressed unit is not valid for them. In Hyman’s (2006) typology these languages are (restricted) tone languages. Pitch as prominence marker does show stress-like tendencies of culminativity and demarcation in these languages which is why a label pitch-accent has been suggested. The tone properties are better explained by another dimension, namely the fact that the distinctive function of tone hardly plays a role at the lexical level but does play a role at the grammatical level","PeriodicalId":42187,"journal":{"name":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","volume":"86 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5842/62-0-898","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The current dimensions in the typology of tone are not insightful for understanding the properties of tone in Cushitic languages. Some Cushitic languages are characterised as “pitch-accent” and these cannot be considered stress languages because the criterion of obligatoriness of every word having a stressed unit is not valid for them. In Hyman’s (2006) typology these languages are (restricted) tone languages. Pitch as prominence marker does show stress-like tendencies of culminativity and demarcation in these languages which is why a label pitch-accent has been suggested. The tone properties are better explained by another dimension, namely the fact that the distinctive function of tone hardly plays a role at the lexical level but does play a role at the grammatical level