Bambara
bam (bamb1269)
Mande (mand1469) > East Manding (east2425)
Africa
( West Africa )
L1 speakers: 5000000
L2 speakers: 13000000
Last modified: 2025-02-19 11:09 by vvydrin
2. Prosodic units
3. Tonal inventory
3.2 Inventory of tonemes
High
[ H ]
toneme

Criteria:

  • The Shared TBU Criterion
  • The Activity Criterion

View details
Low
[ L ]
toneme
Allotones: [ L H ]

Criteria:

  • The Extensibility Criterion
  • The Floating Criterion
  • The Tonal Morpheme Criterion
  • The Shared TBU Criterion
  • The Activity Criterion

View details
4. Tonotactics
4.3. Toneless syllables
5. Stress and tone
6. Tonal Rules
OCP
Obligatory Contour Principle
/L/ > [LH] / _L

if /L/ is followed by another /L/ toneme, a buffer high tone is inserted at the end of the first /L/ span: mùso ‘woman’ + sàba ‘three’ → [mùsó sàbà] ‘three women’

This rule is applied after:

  • Tonal compacity
  • Simplification of the tonal contour of the stem of a derived or compound word
  • Tonal spread
Tonal compacity
tonal spread
[T] .+ > [T .+] / (word _ (suffix _))

The tonal span of the initial components of a nominal compound extends on the non-initial components whose lexical tones are erased: bíɲɛ ‘liver’ + kàlama ‘stick’ → bíɲɛkalama [bíɲɛ́kálámá] ‘liver kebab’.

Simplification of the tonal contour of the stem of a derived or compound word
toneme deletion
T1 T2 > T1 / (compound (word _ ) (word))

If a noun containing more than one tonal span enters into derivation or word compounding as an initial element, its tonal contour is simplified: the first toneme is spread over the entire derived or compound word. tásàlen ‘kettle for ablutions’ + -ba an augmetative suffix → tásalenba [H tásalenba] ‘big kattle’

Phrase-final lowering
tonal spread
/L/ /H/+ > /L/ / _#

If there is phrase-final sequence of H tones preceded by a L tone, the entire H-tone sequence can be optionally lowered to L.

Tonal spread
tonal spread
[T] . > [T .]

All derivative and inflectional suffixes in Bambara are underlyingly toneless. On the surface, they are integrated into the tonal span of the root/stem. E.g.: [H sɔ̀gɔ] ‘to tie’ + -ra PFV.INTR → [tìgɛ-ra], [H sé] ‘to arrive’ + -ra PFV.INTR → [H sé-ra].

7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones
7.1. Grammatical tonal morphemes
7.3. Lexical tones
Miscellaneous
10. Tonal notation in the writing
Analytical report (fulltext)

A detailed analytical report on the tonal system of Bambara is available as a preprint at Zenodo.