The interation of segmental and tonal levels the case of w in Temne

Abstract

Temne is a West Atlantic Mel language, spoken in northern Sierra Leone, which has both phonemic and morphological tone. This paper explores the interaction between tonal and segmental levels through the investigation of segmental rules of insertion and deletion and through verbal inflections and derivations. The paper shows that tonal patterns on Temne verbs are not additive, unlike the segmental portions of the verbs, and that the tones on verbs must be viewed as almost totally independent of the component morphemes of the verb. In the process, the paper argues for the analysis of an underlying vowel and for the analysis of pronouns as noncliticized morphemes, which means that Temne has redundant subject markers in certain types of sentences. Both of these are issues which various authors have taken opposing stances on in the literature.

Keywords

• Temne
• Mel
• tone
• morphology
• subject markers