A Complehensive Study of African Tone/Accent languages

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24320077
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Kaji Shigeki 京都大学, アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科, 名誉教授 (10134751)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 品川 大輔 香川大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (80513712) ; 古閑 恭子 高知大学, 人文社会・教育科学系, 准教授 (90306473) ; 米田 信子 大阪大学, 言語文化研究科(研究院), 教授 (90352955)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: アフリカ / 声調 / アクセント

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In discussion of tone languages, we usually think of East-Asian monosyllabic tone langugaes such as Mandarin Chinese. However, they are of one type and cannot be taken as typical examples. In fact there are a number of other type tone language in Africa. Thus, for example, we find languages like Tembo of Eastern Congo, in which the number of tonal patterns increases in geometric progression of the syllables (or moras) which constitute the word. In other languages like Haya of Tanzania the patterns increase arithmetically. Still in others like Nyoro of Uganda the number of patterns remains the same regardless of the number of syllables of the words. Another important observation in African languages is that tone functions more grammatically than lexically.

Free Research Field

言語学