A floating tone is a morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no consonants, no vowels, but only tone. It cannot be pronounced by itself, but affects the tones of neighboring morphemes.
An example occurs in Bambara. Bambara has two phonemic tones, high and low. In this language, the definite article is a floating low tone. With a noun in isolation, it is associated with the preceding vowel, turning a high tone into a falling tone: river; the river. When it occurs between two high tones, it downsteps the following tone:
- it's not a river
- (or ) it's not the river
Also common are floating tones associated with a segmental morpheme such as an affix. For example, in Okphela, an Edoid language of Nigeria, the main negative morpheme is distinguished from the present tense morpheme by tone; the present tense morpheme (á-) carries high tone, whereas the negative past morpheme (´a-) imposes a high tone on the syllable which precedes it:
- oh á-nga he is climbing
- óh a-nga he didn't climb
Floating tones derive historically from morphemes which assimilate or lenite to the point where only their tone remains.
Famous quotes containing the words floating and/or tone:
“I know, it must have been my imagination, but it makes me realize how desperately alone the Earth is. Hanging in space like a speck of food floating in the ocean. Sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by.... Time will tell, Dr. Mason. We can only wait and wonder. Wonder how, wonder when.”
—Tom Graeff. Young astronomer, Teenagers from Outer Space, after just seeing the invading spaceship through his telescope, and dismissing it (1959)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)