Tone and Inflection: New Facts and New Perspectives

Description

Tone is about melody and meaning, inflection is about grammar, and this book is about a bit of both. The contributions to this volume study possible and sometimes complex ways in which the tones of a language engage in the expression of grammatical categories. There is a widespread conception that tone is a lexical phenomenon only. This is partly a consequence of the main interest in tone coming from phonology, while the main interest in inflection has stemmed from segmental morphology. Similarly, textbooks on inflection and textbooks on tone give very few examples of the inflectional use of tone, and such examples are often the same ones or too similar. This volume aims to broaden our understanding of the link between tone and inflection by showing that there is more to tone than meets the eye. The book includes general chapters as well as case studies on lesser known languages of Asia, Africa and Papua New Guinea, with a special focus on the Oto-Manguean languages, a large and diverse linguistic stock of Mexico that inspired Kenneth Pike’s 1948 seminal work on tone. Most of the contributions to this volume provide first-hand data from recent fieldwork that stems from important language documentation activities. Table of contents 1. Tone and inflection: An introduction Part 1: Tone and inflection: General questions with a focus on inflectional tonogenesis 2. Morphological tonal assignments in conflict: Who wins? 3. Tonogenesis and tonal alternations in Khaling 4. Tonal inflection in Mian 5. Tonal inflection in Mande languages: The cases of Bamana and Dan-Gw??taa Part 2: Tone and inflection: Insights from the Oto-Manguean languages 6. A typology of tone and inflection: A view from the Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico 7. Tone and inflection in Zenzontepec Chatino 8. Tonal inflection and dialectal variation in Mazatec 9. Tonal overwriting and inflectional exponence in Amuzgo 10. Abstract and concrete tonal classes in Itunyoso Triqui person morphology 11. Tracing the emergence of inflectional tone in Cuicatec 12. Verbal inflection in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec Subject index Language index