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Between stress and tone in Nubi word prosody

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2006

Carlos Gussenhoven
Carlos Gussenhoven
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen and Queen Mary, University of London
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Abstract

Nubi is a language with culminative word prominence, spoken in Uganda and Kenya. The prominence, or accent, falls within a right-edge three-syllable window, and at the phrasal level deaccenting and rhythm-related accent shift occur in specific phonological and morphological contexts. Since accent is used to express morphological categories, and deaccenting and accent shift are morphologically conditioned, the functional load of accent is comparable to that of morphologically conditioned stress in other languages. Accented syllables are associated with H tones, with default L tones appearing between them. Typologically, Nubi is not a stress-accent language, because unlike for example English, it has no stress distinctions independently of the distinction between accented and unaccented syllables. It is also non-tonal, because accent marking is not lexically idiosyncratic, and because it has no option other than to supply a H tone is accented syllables, it is unlike a prototypical intonation language that has pitch accents with discoursal meanings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 2006 , pp. 192 - 223
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This work was made possible by the kind assistance and advice given by a number of people. I thank Ineke Wellens for facilitating my introduction to the Nubi community in Bombo, Abdul Majid Uthman for serving as my host and for his efficient help in recruiting speakers, Mustafa Khamis and Muzamil Ajobe for sharing their understanding of the language with me, and Abdullah Serwada for providing information on the wider Nubi community. I also thank my speakers Kifaya Musa, Salima Abdalla, Zena Rajab, Khadija Hamid, Abdul Majid Uthman, Abdulmajid Ibrahim Juma Kishonaka, Kassim Hassan, Hawa Abdul, Osman Kassim and Farida Taib. I am grateful to Larry Hyman for extensive discussion, to him, Jörg Peters and Yiya Chen for their comments on an earlier version of the text and to Toni Rietveld for help with statistics.