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SUMMARY:Mwani\, freely picking and choosing from tone and stress? - Dr Mau
 d Devos (Royal Museum for Central Africa\, Belgium)
DTSTART:20151105T160000Z
DTEND:20151105T173000Z
UID:TALK61216@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Theodora Alexopoulou
DESCRIPTION:!\nMwani\, a Mozambican Bantu language closely related to Swah
 ili\, has previously been\ndescribed either as a tone (Floor 2000) or a pi
 tch-accent language (Philippson 1993\, 1992\,\n1989). Rather than trying t
 o force one or the other type on Mwani\, I aim\, in line with\nHyman 2009\
 , to examine the properties of the Mwani tone system in order to better\nu
 nderstand which interesting in-between-systems languages can come up with.
 \nMwani pitch has a restricted lexical function in nominal morphology and 
 a clear\ngrammatical function in verbal morphology. Nouns can have one out
  of two tonal patterns\n(i.e.\, penultimate (PU) H and antepenultimate (AP
 U) H). The minimal pair in (1)\nillustrates the PU and the APU pattern on 
 otherwise identical nouns.\n(1) kipáma ‘fish (sp.)’ PU\nkipâma ‘wa
 ll’ APU\nEvery inflection has one (or more depending on subject specific
 ations or the presence or\nabsence of an object prefix) out of five melodi
 c stem tone patterns assigned to it: no H\,\nultimate (U) H\, penultimate 
 (PU) H\, antepenultimate (APU) H and stem-initial (S1) as\nwell as PU H (S
 1PU). In (2) an example of each pattern is given in combination with -\nzu
 ngunukira.\n(2) ni-zungunuk-ir-a ‘I (have) turned around towards’ no H
 \nsp1sg-turn.around-appl-pfv\nzungunuk-ir-á ‘turn around towards!’ U\
 nturn.around-appl-imp\na-wa-zungunuk-ír-e ‘they have not turned around 
 towards’ PU\nneg-sp2-turn.around-appl-pfv\na-wa-zungunúk-ir-a ‘they d
 o not turn around towards’ APU\nneg-sp2-turn.around-appl-prs\nku-zúngú
 nuk-ír-a ‘to turn around towards’ S1PU\nnp15-turn.around-appl-fv\nWhe
 reas these functions are typical of tone systems of other Eastern Bantu la
 nguages\n(Odden & Bickmore 2014)\, the H tone positions are reminiscent of
  metrical systems. This\nis especially the case for the so-called APU patt
 ern for which the position of the melodic\nH depends not only on the numbe
 r of mora’s of the macro-stem but also on syllable\nweight.\nOther prope
 rties of the Mwani prosodic system including interfaces with syntax show\n
 how detailed descriptions of little known languages urge us to continuousl
 y fine-tune the\ntypological systems we come up with.\nReferences\nHyman\,
  L.M. 2009. How not to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent.
 \nLanguage Sciences 31: 213-238.\nOdden\, D. & L. Bickmore (eds). 2014. Me
 lodic Tone in Bantu. Africana Linguistica 20.\nPhilippson\, G. 1989. Quelq
 ues données sur le mwani (Mozambique): Eléments de\nphonologie comparati
 ve et présentation du système verbal. In M.-F. Rombi (ed.)\, Le\nswahili
  et ses limites: ambiguïté des notions reçues\, pp. 69-81. Paris: Editi
 ons Recherche\nsur les Civilisations.\nPhilippson\, G. 1992. Tons et accen
 t dans les langues bantu d’Afrique Orientale. Etude\ncomparative typolog
 ique et diachronique. CNRS: Thèse d’état.\nPhilippson\, G. 1993. Tone 
 (and Stress) in Sabaki. In D. Nurse & T.J. Hinnebusch\, Swahili\nand Sabak
 i: A linguistic history\, pp. 248-265. Berkeley\, Los Angeles: University 
 of\nCalifornia Press.\nFloor\, S. 2000. Mwani grammatical sketch. SIL Moza
 mbique.
LOCATION:GR06/07\, English Faculty Building\, 9 West Road\, Sidgwick Site
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