ABSTRACT
Consonant + vowel interactions are as complex as the interaction of tone and segments. This chapter presents an acoustic study of coarticulation involving CV segments with mid-tone compared with low-tone in Yoruba, as observed for two speech styles. Since the representation of tone has consequences for coarticulation, the question whether tone is to be represented segmentally, suprasegmentally, or both, was heavily debated at the Congresses of the West African Linguistic Society in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The study of African languages, especially Bantu, has drawn considerable attention particularly to its pervasive use of lexical tone, but has mostly described tone spreading in tone languages, and vowel and nasal harmony. Several of the studies have shown that, for languages that use emphatic stress, there is a greater CV bonding under emphasis than without emphatic stress; the role of tone, with properties analogous to stress, in C+V interaction is rarely examined in the same context.
