Tone Types
Underlyingly, each syllable of every morpheme may be described as having one of two tone types: high (H ) and null (ø). On the surface, all remaining null tones default to low (the LTA rule below) and the language is therefore spoken with two contrasting tonemes (H and L).
A classic example of a nasal carrying a tone:
- To form a locative from a noun, one of the possible procedures involves simply suffixing a low tone -ng to the noun. To form the locative meaning "on the grass" one suffixes -ng to the word jwang‡ , giving jwanng‡ , with the two last syllabic nasals having contrasting tones.
Names, being nouns, frequently have a tonal pattern distinct from the noun:
- The Sesotho word for "mother/missus/ma'am" is mme‡ , but a child would call their own mother mme‡ , using it as a first name. Also, ntate‡ means father/mister/sir, while ntate‡ might be used by a small child to say "dad."
Read more about this topic: Sotho Tonology
Famous quotes containing the words tone and/or types:
“There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues made them great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)