Tonal morphology in a creole: High-tone raising in Saramaccan serial verb constructions

The focus of this paper is on several cases of tone raising in Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole spoken in Surinam, which appear to be best analyzed as the manifestation of morphological floating high tones. Floating tones have been a well-recognized part of modern linguistic theory since at least Goldsmith (1976:57–62) who defined a floating tone as “a segment specified only for tone which, at some point during the derivation, merges with some vowel, thus passing on its tonal features to that vowel (1976:57).” It is not uncommon for a floating tone to serve as the sole marker of a morphosyntactic construction in tonal languages. Goldsmith, for example, describes a floating high tone in Igbo which appears at the right edge of preverbal nouns to mark particular kinds of subordinate clauses (1976:57–62). And, the use of such floating tonal morphemes has not been limited, by any means, only to phonological works like Goldsmith’s. In a recent article with a focus on syntax and semantics, for example, Bisang and Sonaiya (1999), explicitly represent a type of subject marker in Yoruba as a floating high tone. Because of the nature of their phonological structure, a notable characteristic of floating tone morphemes is the fact that they may fail to be overtly realized due to the tonal specification of the tone bearing units (TBU’s) which could potentially serve as their hosts. For example, if a floating high tone attaches to a TBU which is already marked with a high tone, there is no way for that floating high tone to be unambiguously realized, barring some special tonological process. Two high tones attaching to some TBU are simply indistinguishable, on the surface, from one high tone attaching to a TBU. Like Yoruba and Igbo (and many other languages), Saramaccan exhibits phenomena which can be well analyzed as the surface manifestation of floating tones. In the case of Saramaccan, the conditions under which these tones ∗ I would like to thank John McWhorter, Larry Hyman, Marvin Kramer, Ingo Plag, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this work. I would also like to thank the attendees at the Workshop on Creole Phonology and Morphology held in Siegen, Germany on August 22–24, 2001. Finally, special thanks should go to my primary consultant Henry Leisberger and the other members of his family who assisted on occasion. Mr. Leisberger is from the village of Gaanze in Surinam.