Talk:Floating tone
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The definition of floating tone is too narrow. I think the example given is a special case: a floating tone which is associated with a phonologically empty morpheme.
More common, I think, are floating tones associated with an overt morpheme such as a prefix, and which dock on an adjacent vowel. For example, in Okphela, a Niger-Congo language of Nigeria, the main negative morpheme is distinguished from the present tense morpheme by tone; the present tense morpheme (á-) carries high tone, and the negative morpheme (´a-) imposes a high tone on the syllable which precedes it:
oh á-nga 'he is climbing' óh a-nga 'he didn't climb'
The relative clause marker of Okphela has a high tone whichs docks to the right. RCs begin with relative marker ni´ ~ n´. The second variant of REL occurs before vowels.
70.65.138.235 18:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Point taken. I've added your example to the text, but will replace it with something else (eventually) if we can't standardize it. What would your example be in the IPA? What name does Okphela go by in Ethnologue? kwami 19:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
What are your reference materials? Thanks,
Anja 82.111.242.96 (talk) 21:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
