‘Leftward ho!’ in Zulu tonology

Abstract

Tonal rules that move a high tone from one tone-bearing unit to another are of two types: those that are immediately followed by the delinking of the high tone from the tone-bearing unit with which it was originally associated, and those where the high tone spreads to the next syllable while retaining its initial association, ending up as a doubly linked tone. The first type of rules we term ‘tone-shift’ rules while the latter are referred to as ‘tone spread’ rules. Both types of rules may move a high tone either to the right or to the left but, in tonal descriptions of Zulu that have appeared so far, only those rules that move a high tone to the right have been discussed. This may be attributed to the paucity of tonal descriptions focusing on the verbal construction, since it is in this construction that the leftward movement of tones is manifest. In this article I examine leftward shift and leftward spread rules. Both types of rules apply, in the majority of cases, to high tones associated with verbal suffixes. It is my claim, for instance, that the tonal difference between akágijími ‘he does not run’ and ángagijîmi ‘he should not run’ is best explained in terms of the rules that move the high tone from the suffix i to the penultimate syllable of the word.