The Tonal Patterns of Nouns in Isolation in the Lwisukha Dialect of Luyia

Abstract

This paper describes the tonal system of nouns uttered in isolation in the Lwisukha dialect of Luyia, a Bantu language of Kenya. The nouns analysed in this paper were uttered by 12 respondents. Each noun was uttered three times by each respondent. Each utterance was analysed for pitch and tone, within the framework of the Autosegmental Phonology Theory (APT). Based on the number of syllables in the stems of the nouns studied, the paper identified thirty-nine tone patterns in total based on two broad categories, namely level and contour tones. To the level-tone category belong the low, the high, and the downstepped high tones identified in this study, while to the contour-tone category belongs just the falling tone. Regarding the nominal prefix indicating grammatical number, the tone was either low (in tables 1-12 cases) or high (in tables 13-39).