Downstep in Tswana (Southern Bantu)
نویسندگان
چکیده
The article investigates the realization of adjacent high tones across word boundaries in Tswana, a Southern Bantu language. The results show that downstep, a lowering of the second in a series of adjacent high tones, takes place across word boundaries within the same phonological phrase. Downstep does not occur across phonological phrase boundaries. The study confirms an empirical phenomenon and a phonological analysis previously suggested for Southern Sotho for the Tswana variety under consideration by providing quantitative details on the phonetic implementation of this prosodic phenomenon. Quantitative data is rarely presented for tonal phenomena in Bantu languages.
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