Tonal languages without tone: downstep in Drubea and Numèè (Oceanic, New Caledonia)
Florian Lionnet
October 2024 

In this paper, I analyze the lexical prosodic system of Drubea and Numèè, two of the rare tonal Oceanic languages. Building on Rivierre's (1973) seminal work, I show that the lexical prosodic system of these two languages can be analyzed as involving only register features: an underlying downstep, and a postlexical epenthetic upstep. Drubea and Numèè are thus tonal languages without tone stricto sensu. This new type of prosodic lexical system has both theoretical and typological consequences: (i) register features, defined as in Snider's (1999, 2020) Register Tier Theory, need not be subordinate to or associated with tones, and may exist in the absence of tone, including in underlying representation; (ii) tonal systems come in two types: tone-based systems in which the tonal contrasts are defined paradigmatically, as in most tone languages, and register-based systems where tonal contrasts are defined syntagmatically, as in Drubea and Numèè.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007926 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Accepted in Phonology
keywords:	tone, register, tone features, tone geometry, downstep, upstep, word-prosodic typology, drubea, numèè, oceanic, phonology
previous versions:	v4 [September 2024] v3 [September 2024] v2 [February 2024] v1 [February 2024]
Downloaded:	793 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]