The Grammatical Function of Papiamentu Tone

Abstract

I propose that tone in Papiamentu is a marker of the morphosyntactic category of a given form. Its primary function, therefore, is grammatical. This account of Papiamentu tone differs from previously proposed accounts, which treat tone in Papiamentu as a lexical property (Römer, 1991; Rivera-Castillo, 1998) or as a purely phonological property (Devonish & Murray, 1995).