JOURNAL ARTICLE

Towards reconstructing grammatical tone in the northwestern Bantu verb phrase.

  • Published In: Diachronica, 2025, v. 42, n. 3/4. P. 324 1 of 3

  • Database: Communication Source 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Grimm, Nadine 3 of 3

Abstract

In this paper, I provide a first systematic analysis of grammatical tone (GT) in the verb phrase of northwestern (NW) Bantu languages. Based on a sample of twelve languages, I show that GT on preverbal subject agreement, tense, aspect, mood, and polarity markers, on the verb stem, and tonal phrase-medial/phrase-final verb distinctions are inherited features. In contrast, GT on elements immediately following the verb is an innovation in some genealogical subgroups of NW Bantu. In Proto-NW-Bantu, GT generally co-occurred with segmental morphemes. This "co-exponence" type is retained in the Proto-B clade of NW Bantu, while languages of Proto-A innovated more exponence types, namely tone-only and segment-only exponents, synchronically exhibiting all three exponence types in individual languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:Diachronica. 2025/07, Vol. 42, Issue 3/4, p324
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Language and Linguistics
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:0176-4225
  • DOI:10.1075/dia.24020.gri
  • Accession Number:189494252
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