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:
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian, toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to conceal their record of ruthless, beaverlike tunneling to the top.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)