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:
“We often contradict an opinion when it is actually only the tone with which it was put forward that is uncongenial to us.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)