| Research Abstract |
In Western Uganda, Bantu languages such as Ankole, Kiga, Tooro, Nyoro, Konjo, Bwisi, Amba, Gungu are spoken. The first four and Haya of Tanzania are so loosely related that they am sometimes grouped together, with the label Runyakitara. However, they are very different with respect of their tone systems. This research was formed with the objective of doing a comparative study of the tones systems of those languages, with additional fieldwork on little-known languages. With three years of research time a substantial data collecting was only done about Tooro, with a less amount of data on Bwisi, Nyoro, and Amba. Ankole and Haya were studied before.
The most characteristic feature of Ankole, Kiga, Tooro, Nyoro, and Haya is that the southern-most language Haya has the most conservative tone system among the five, and the tone system becomes simpler as we go northwards, to the point that Tooro has lost its lexical tone (Nyoro, which is spoken to the north of Tooro, seems to keep its lexical tone). In Tooro, all nouns and verbs are pronounced with a high tone on the penultimate syllable of the word. This must have been brought about in connection with the fact that in Haya and Ankole, the high tone on the last syllable is realized on the previous syllable. One more characteristics of tone about these languages is that low-toned Words in Haya and Ankole have their cognates in Nyoro where a high tone shows up on the antepenultimate syllable of the word, thus advancing the high tone to the left by one syllable from Tooro.
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