Abstract
This descriptive study aims to investigate how grammatical tone is realized in Cigogo verbs. The information was gathered through interviews and oral history techniques in the villages of Muungano, Ilolo, and Ndebwe in the Mvumi division. The replies from the interviews and the storytelling were captured using an MP3 recorder. The verb forms were then evoked for the analysis of the tone patterns based on the autosegmental theory. The findings show that Cigogo uses a grammatical tone to convey the perfective aspect, imperative mood, and reflexiveness in the past tense (immediate past). The kind of verb stem determines where the grammatical tone should be placed. The grammatical tone in monosyllabic verbs is indicated by the prefixes joined to that particular stem, whereas it is indicated by the stem’s first syllable in polysyllabic stems. In the end, the study concludes that Cigogo is a tone language since it includes some grammatical features that are tone-marked. Nevertheless, more research on tone in this language can be conducted to study the tone qualities, either in terms of tonological processes or other lexical categories.
Recommended Citation
J. Chipalo, Amani
(2023)
"The Realisation of Grammatical Tone in Cigogo Verbs,"
Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences: Vol. 12
:
No.
1
, Article 6.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.56279/jhss.v12i1