| Student 2: |
I missed it again. |
| Student 1: |
What? |
| Student 2: |
The tone. |
| Student 1: |
What tone? Missed one of
these downsteps? |
| Student 2: |
Downstep? Quite the contrary.
The tone went up where I thought it should have been down… |
| Student 1: |
And why should it have been
down? |
| Student 2: |
Why??? Don't you remember,
we spent hours to get the tones of the
verb sorted out. |
| Student 1: |
Yes, I do. |
| Student 2: |
And all the fuss they made
about those verbs which are Short and High most of the time, but then become
Long and Low in the Past? ÏÀkõàõà
NÀkraànà, Yñàtõàõà kwaàduá, NÀsuáõá tõàõà nànoáraá. Don't
you remember? We were told that this is typical of storytelling: õàtõàõà
… oàdìì and so on. |
| Student 1: |
Yes, but dont't forget that
there are other verbs which have more than one syllable… |
| Student 2: |
I know, I know, and these
have a High tone in the middle, as in wõàbìsaáaà
me
"they asked me". |
| Student 1: |
But even the short verbs
sometimes have another syllable added to them… |
| Student 2: |
Yes, and then they become
disyllabic. For instance at the beginning of the famous
story of the ant and the dove, when the ant is going to fall into the
river, we have kõà-tõá
'go
fall' (-> verb tone pattern; -> andative).
This behaves just like any other 2-syllabic stem, and we get the beautiful
wave contour naà
õàkõàtõáõà muà. |
| Student 1: |
You sound very poetic.
But where is your problem? |
| Student 2: |
Just listen to the small
sentence which comes right after that. |
| Student 3: |
Let's hear. |
| Student 1: |
That õàtõáõà
nàsuáoá noá muá noá is really High. |
| Student 2: |
Yes, and the verb is short,
one syllable, and is part of the story. |
| Student 1: |
Maybe is is just an error. |
| Student 2: |
But it happens all the time
in the story. My friend told me that this is the way it has to be, but
why the tone changes he does not know. |
| Student 1: |
Of course not. If you learn
to speak the language as a child, you know these things without even knowing
what you know. |
| Student 4: |
Couldn't it be a matter of
dialects? Dolphyne shows in
Chapter 3 of her 1988 book that tones differ a lot between dialects. |
| Student 2: |
I almost lost a friend when
I suggested that the storyteller had mixed dialects. |
| Student 5: |
You should never suggest
anything like that. |
| Student 2: |
Of course not. |
| Student 3: |
Isn't that what I always
said? Forget about tone. You think you got it, and it only gets you
into
trouble. It changes all the time, and by the way, this is one of the reasons
they don't want to have it in the orthography. |
| Student 5: |
It seems to me you are all
trying do describe a black cat in a dark room. Why do you not take the
time to look up the references?
Some people have written about these things, and reading it, rather than
arguing out of the blue, could get you out of the dark. |
| Student 4: |
Tell us. |
| Student 5: |
Well for instance, there
is a Ghanaian linguist, living in the United States, called Paul
A. Kotey. Kotey has published a
Twi-English and English-Twi dictionary, by the way all the tones are marked
in it. He says in an article… |
| Student 2: |
I am not interested in theory,
I just want to know where these funny High tones come from, and why the
tones change. |
| Teacher: |
Allow me to say something
here. You just want to know why. This is just what a good theory does,
it helps you to know why. |
| Student 2: |
So tell me. |
| Student 5: |
Kotey says "that words that
constitute a sentence may have one set of tones on them, but when that
sentence is used as a subordinate clause in another sentence, the tones
may be totally different." |
| Student 2: |
I am not interested in what
Kotey says. |
| Student 3: |
But I am. |
| Teacher: |
Yes, I really think it is
worth looking at the whole question of tone again, and consider what others
have to say as well. But let us first take care of the emergency… |
| Student 4: |
Why not divide into two groups,
one for those who are only interested in the funny High tones, and another
group for those of us who would like to know about what Kotey and others
have to say on this subject. |
| Teacher: |
Fine with me. So those who
want to discuss basics, click on link to discussion on how to deal with
the problem of tonal change (which at the end will take you back to this
point). The others, just stay with me. |
| Student 1: |
While you were talking, I
had a bright idea. Couldn't it be that the funny High tone of õtõõ
is
there because the audience already know from the preceding sentence that
the ant is going to fall into the river, so this sentence does not tell
him anything new? |
| Student 2: |
Sounds like another one of
these weird theories. |
| Teacher: |
No, you are on the right
track. |
| Student 2: |
But why does he repeat what
was already said? |
| Student 1: |
It is not quite a repetition
because he had not yet said that the ant had fallen into the river, but
only that it was going to. |
| Teacher: |
Right. But the idea is already
there, and the expectation that the ant will fall into the river is there
as well. |
| Student 1: |
But I think it is necessary
that it be stated clearly that it actually fell into the water. After all,
this is where the story starts from. This is what causes the dove to rescue
the ant. This is what creates the link between the two animals. |
| Teacher: |
And this is why this funny
High tone is called the Link tone. |
| Student 2: |
You are kidding. Why do you
need a special tone to create a link between two animals in a story? |
| Teacher: |
Well, you wanted to know
why this tone is here. Just listen to a few examples:
| 1.
kaa
nie |
. |
it is a car |
| 2.
kaa
nie |
. |
it is a ring |
| 3.
me
kaa nie |
no change |
it is my car |
| 4.
me
kaa nie |
initial Low tone is
replaced by High |
it is my ring |
| 5.
õsõre |
verb stem is High |
he prays |
| 6.
õsõre |
verb stem is Low-High |
he stands up |
| 7.
me
na mesõre |
no change |
it is me who prays |
| 8.
me
na mesõre |
initial Low tone is
replaced by High |
it is me who stands up |
|
| Student 1: |
It is funny, the changes
which occur on the verb in (7-8) are exactly the same as those we observe
on the noun in (3-4). |
| Teacher: |
It is always the first Low
tone which is replaced by a High, mostly on the first syllable of the noun
stem or of the verb stem. In some well-defined cases, the tone change occurs
on the syllable preceding the stem - the possessive pronoun before the
noun, the subject prefix or the aspect marker before the verb. |
| Student 2: |
And you are saying that this
change occurs when there is a link two something already said or a link
of association between the ring and its owner, for instance. |
| Teacher: |
Exactly. You want to know
more? |
| Student 2: |
Later. |
| Teacher: |
Okay. Whenever you feel like
more, just click on linking tone 1 or
linking
tone 2. |
| Student 1: |
What you have just said about
pointing back to something already said or known - Is this when the linking
tone occurs? |
| Teacher: |
Well, it also occurs in relative
clauses, in focus sentences as we
have seen already, and in temporal adverbial clauses. This last case is
illustrated by the example from the story. It was when the ant fell into
the water, that the story began to unfold. |
| Student 2: |
Thanks. But are these all
the tone changes which occur? |
| Teacher: |
Linking tone is really the
most important. When you understand this essentially simple principle,
you have mastered more than half of it. There are some others, mostly due
to High tone spreading. Let's leave these for another time. |