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BEYOND TONE: FUNCTIONS OF PITCH IN SHONA by ANN A. JEFFERIES A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1990 Copyright 1990 by Ann A. Jefferies — ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must thank my family first for making this work possible, and my director, Dr. Der-Houssikian, and committee members, as well as others at the University of Florida, the University of Zimbabwe and elsewhere for their guidance, assistance, suggestions and, especially, for their criticism. As for those who so generously did so much, each in their own ways, which helped me complete this step Brenda Willis, Roger Cole, Nancy Taylor, Vikki Akca, Tom Hammer, N. C. Dembetembe, Juliette Thondhlana, Jim Haskins, Sahie Kang, Haba Musengezi, Ande Tyler, Bob Dalsky, Cynthia Mparutsa, Thorell Tsomondo, Joyce Kazembe, Evelyn Pangeti, Herbert Chimhundu, Tobias Chawatama, Innocent Banda, Caleb Dube, Arlene Jacquette, Munashe Furusa, Robert Muponde, Chipo Masvingo, Alex Matthews, T. A. Wright, Sr., Michael — Towers, and Renee Datz among them there are no adequate thanks except, perhaps, to complete the next one. 1• 1t1• PREFACE The dissertation work was begun at the University of Florida, where I had, for two years, access to Shona- speaking linguists, to other linguists who were trained within a number of theoretical frameworks in phonology, syntax and discourse, some of whom with considerable exper- tise the study of Bantu and other tonal and pitch accent languages, to Shona classes as well as to a broad range of written texts in and about Shona and other southern Bantu languages. The bulk of the work, however, was accomplished in Harare, Zimbabwe, where, under a Fulbright/IIE Research Grant, I was fortunate in being associated with the Univer- sity of Zimbabwe's Department of African Languages and Literature for almost two years. During that time, I con- tinued my studies of Shona as a second language and gathered most of the data upon which the dissertation is based. I also benefitted greatly from consultation with Shona- speaking linguists and others there, as well as from their assistance with the construction, translation and elicita- tion of data which I used to test the evolving hypotheses, all of which was generously given by various members of the Department, the Department of Linguistics and others, particularly within the University community. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I• l•l• . PREFACE iv . . KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS vi . . ABSTRACT Vl•l# . CHAPTERS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 . . . 2 SUPRASEGMENTALS .16 . 3 TONE .39 . 4 PITCH .88 . 5 ACCENT 126 . 6 ACCENTS AND WRITTEN TEXT 158 . 7 CONCLUSION 173 . APPENDICES \ A KEY TO TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS 177 . B ILLUSTRATIVE DATA SAMPLE 178 . C DATA TRANSLATIONS .232 REFERENCES .240 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .248 v KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS ADJ Adjective ADV Adverb COMP Complement CONJ Conjunction CONSEC Consecutive Phrase COP Copula DEM Demonstrative DET Determiner ENUM Enumerative IMP Imperative INF Infinitive INTERJ Interjective LOC Locative MAN Manner MV Main Verb N Noun NEARP Near Past NEG Negative NP Noun Phrase OC Object Concord P Plural PERF Perfective POSS Possessive . PRHAB Present Habitual PRESPROG Present Progressive PRO Pronoun PROPN Proper Noun REL-PART Participial Function as Noun Specifier REMP Remote Past S Sentence s Singular SC Subject Concord SEL Selector STAT Stative V Verb WhQ Wh- Question 1 First Person 2 Second Person 3 Third Person # Word Boundary * Unacceptable Form VI Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy BEYOND TONE: FUNCTIONS OF PITCH IN SHONA by Ann A. Jefferies December, 1990 Chairman: Haig Der-Houssikian Major Department: Linguistics Shona is a south-central Bantu language, whose speakers mark both lexical and inflectional morphemes with one of two phonemically level tones. The tonal system, which has been analyzed through both structural and generative frameworks, has been shown to be one which is highly complex and subject to considerable variation. The realization of pitch shapes and relative pitch heights at the phrase level and above, however, cannot be accounted for, either accurately or completely, by current descriptions of morphological tone assignments and phonological assimilation and dissimilation processes. The dissertation addresses three hypotheses: phrase 1) and sentence level pitch phenomena interact with and affect the realizations of phonemic, lexically assigned tones in Shona; 2) formally, a peak pitch, around which other pitches fall, occurs in each phrase; 3) functionally, peak pitch Vl•l• I placement marks each phrase as a phrase and at least rein- forces the identification of phrase structure types. To test the hypotheses, short passages were constructed whioh controlled for topic and contained a variety of struc— tures in context. The passages were orally interpreted by five readers and recorded on audio tapes. Pitch shapes and levels, syllable duration, morphophonemic juncture and syllable loudness, when it was particularly prominent, were marked on the transcriptions of each reading. The study incorporates two analytical frameworks: a structuralist framework was used to describe the formal aspects of the data, and an integrative discourse framework was applied to describe the functional aspects discussed. The results of the analysis showed that a peak pitch occurred as close to phrase—initial position as the struc— ture would allow in most phrases. Xt would often be accom- panied by a junctural break and/or extra loudness. The data showed a strong correlation between peak pitch placement and — phrase type for all readers. Discourse factors old infor- mation, redundant structural marking, and the effects of a — preceding peak which marked a containing structure accounted for most exceptions. The dissertation argues for a description which assigns tone at the lexical level and peak pitch, or accent, at the phrase level and discusses possible implications for such a Vl•lIl• description. The Appendices include illustrative samples of the transcribed data. ix . CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Shona is a tonal south—central Bantu language which is spoken as a first language by some nine to ten million people, most of whom live in Zimbabwe. According to Guth- rie's (1967) classification and others, the language is closely related to Tonga, Sotho, and Venda. The name "Shona" is of relatively recent coinage and has not, until this century, been used indigenously as a self-identifier First—language speakers of the language are often regionally grouped as Kalanga, Karanga, Korekore, Manyika, Ndau and Zezuru speakers. "Town Shona," or "ChiHarare," which is reflected in the data comprising the basis of this study, is a rapidly evolving set of urban varieties spoken in the capital which shows influence from not only first—language Shona speakers from all areas of the country, but also the first-language speakers of other languages, most signifi- cantly speakers of English and Ndebele. This study grows out of the relatively large body of work on Shona and initiates an exploration of phrase-level pitch, duration, loudness and other suprasegmental phenomena of the language. The study focuses on pitch variations, although the data under study here suggests that these seem 1