The relation between the middle tone and empty category principle violations in Krio

Abstract

An examination of monosyllabic words in Krio reveals the existence of three distinct tones: high. mid and low. words of more than one syllable. However, only two tones are attested: high and low. The mid tone is, in fact, found only in monosyllabic forms in two very specific contexts: citation forms and sentence final forms. In other contexts. the mid tone ia replaced by the high tone. This suggests that the mid tone is merely a phonetic variant of the high tone. The interaction of tones and syntax is considered.

Keywords

• Krio
• tone
• syntax