Leiden University Student Repository

Boone, Cornelia J.L. (2016)

Tone in the Bobo Madare North Noun System

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

This paper researches tone in Bobo Madare North, a Niger-Congo, Mande language (ISO 639-3: bbo), spoken in Mali and Burkina Faso, closely related to Sya. After examining its basic principles regarding tone, a limited overview of tone in the verb system is given. The paper proceeds to investigate tone in the noun system. Morphologically simple nouns, inflection (pluralisation), some compounding and derivation, as well as tone processes happening across word boundaries (definite and possessive constructions) are investigated. The author makes use of her own research data, applying principles of autosegmental phonology for her analysis. Bobo Madare North has three underlying tones with automatic and non-automatic downstep, tone spreading and (local?) upstep.

Tone

Noun system

Bobo Madare North

Mande

Mali

Burkina Faso

Author

Boone, Cornelia J.L.

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language Diversity of Africa, Asia and Native America

Supervisors

Mous, M.P.G.M.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en