Abstract: The languages of Africa display an astonishing variety of complex tone systems, and a correspondingly large body of literature has grown up in an attempt to understand them. Together with East Asia, Africa has probably the highest ratio of tonal to non-tonal languages, with tonal languages found in just about every language family with the exception of Semitic and Berber. In particular, the Niger-Congo family, which subsumes most of the sub-Saharan languages, including the Bantu group, is almost entirely tonal (or occasionally accentual). Table 6.1, based largely on Bendor-Samuel 1989, shows the affiliation of the major tonal languages of Africa, including all those discussed in this chapter.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-08-15
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 95
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