ABSTRACT

Sophisticated and revealing studies of Bantu tone have long existed, including overviews (van Spaandonck 1967, Stevick 1969a, Hyman 1976a); tone-marked descriptive studies arising from the Belgian involvement in the Congo (e.g. Burssens 1939, Coupez 1955, Stappers 1964, Meeussen 1954); analyses of tone in specific languages such as Tonga (Carter 1962, Meeussen 1963), Sukuma (Richardson 1959), Ganda (Meeussen 1966, Stevick 1969b, McCawley 1970), Kinga (Schadeberg 1973), Safwa (Voorhoeve 1973). The advent of autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith 1976) spurred an explosion of theoretically oriented, data-intensive research ranging across a variety of Bantu languages. Space precludes exhaustive listing, but the following may be mentioned: Kikuyu (Clements and Ford 1979), Makhuwa (Cheng and Kisseberth 1979, 1980, 1981), Tonga (Goldsmith 1981), Shona (Odden 1981), Ganda (Hyman 1982), Ruri (Massamba 1982), Venda (Cassimjee 1986), the Lacustrine subgroup (Goldsmith 1987), Jita (Downing 1990), Zigula (Kisseberth 1992), Matuumbi (Odden 1996), Kalanga (Mathangwane 1998), Xhosa (Cassimjee 1998). A wide range of languages are described and analyzed in various collections focusing on Bantu tone: Yukawa (1987a, 1989, 1992); Clements and Goldsmith (1984); Hyman and Kisseberth (1998); Blanchon and Creissels (1999).