ABSTRACT
If the tonic is placed, within a tone-group, on an item other than the last, there will be a tail present. Rather few tails are found in the two texts: both together have only 27. Not every instance of a tail is the result of special placement of the tonic, though. The statement made above as to the special nature of non-final placement of the tonic has to be modified under certain conditions of grammar. For instance, various adjuncts which commonly, and neutrally, stand after the Predicator, are not, in neutral intonation, selected for the tonic. These are: vocatives, demonstratives of place, final tags and adjuncts such as sasa 'now'. Utterances with these items at their ends will be regarded as having neutral intonation when the tonic is placed on the item before them, as in
44. lakini hawakufanyia kule 'but they didn't operate there'
46. Saa moja kasoro dakika bwana 'Ten to seven, bwana'
(N224-225)
(D125)
In cases other than these, non-final tonic will be regarded as being special intonation. Special intonation of this kind often co-occurs with special group-sequence or other special syntactic features, such as the presence of a pronoun. Special word-order frequently entails the placement before the Predicator of items which, in neutral order, would stand after it. The tonic in these cases often remains, as it were, on the item usually final, and so it too stands non-finally, e.g.
