Hausa
hau (haus1257)
Afro-Asiatic (afro1255) > West Chadic A.1 (west2718)
Africa
L1 speakers:
L2 speakers:
Last modified: 2024-09-19 11:23 by llitvinova
2. Prosodic units
3. Tonal inventory
3.2 Inventory of tonemes
High
[ H ]
toneme

Criteria:

  • The Floating Criterion
  • The Tonal Morpheme Criterion
  • The Activity Criterion

View details
Low
[ L ]
toneme

Criteria:

  • The Floating Criterion
  • The Activity Criterion

View details
4. Tonotactics
4.3. Toneless syllables
5. Stress and tone
6. Tonal Rules
Tonal Polarity
other

The toneless copulae neː (SG.MSC/PL) and tʃeː (SG.FEM) take the tone opposite to the preceding one.

Toneme extension
tonal spread

A toneme can extend from right to left within a prosodic word. For example, pluractional verbs are formed by reduplication of the first part of a trisyllabic verb root. In this case, the initial tone of the verb melody spreads from right to left onto the reduplicated syllable as follows: káràntáː ‘read’ → kákkaràntáː ‘read repeatedly’

Tonal melody shift
tonal shift

When a prosodic word is expanded, its tonal melody is re-assigned to that expanded word from right to left. The expansion of a prosodic word occurs in the Imperative construction when object pronouns integrate into the preceding verb form: the Imperative tonal melody L-H is mapped onto a verb root and the following object pronoun as follows: màːɽeː́ ‘slap’ + \LH (IMP) + -tà (3SG.FEM) → màːɽeː́ ‘slap’ + -tà (3SG.FEM) + \LH (IMP) → màːɽeːtá ‘Slap her!’

Toneme deletion
toneme deletion

There are several cases of toneme deletion in Hausa: If the initial syllable is light, it cannot host two tonemes of a melody. Thus, the first toneme of the melody is deleted, e.g. tʃí 'eat' + \LH (IMP) → tʃí 'Eat!'. A floating L toneme is deleted in following cases: (i) when the root-final vowel to which the floating L tone is attached is short, e.g. ʔàukú ‘happen’ + -Lwáː (NMLZ) → ʔàukúwáː ‘occurrence’, (ii) when the root-final long vowel carries L, e.g. ɽúfèː ‘close’ + -Lwáː (NMLZ) → ɽúfèːwáː ‘closing’, and (iii) when the root-final long vowel carries a sequence of H and L, e.g. tʃêː ‘say’ + -Lwáː (NMLZ) → tʃêːwá ‘saying’ A toneme can be deleted when its segmental carrier is deleted, e.g. Háruːnà → Háruː (proper name)

LH contour simplification
other
LH → L / H_

A LH sequence on one syllable becomes L if the preceding tone within the same word form is H, e.g. múkà jí → múkài ‘we did’

LH contour simplification
tonal spread
LH → H / elsewhere

A LH sequence on one syllable becomes H elsewhere, e.g. dòːmín → dón ‘because’

7. Grammatical Tones
Miscellaneous
8. Tonal classes of words
10. Tonal notation in the writing