Meeussen's rule
Encyclopedia
Meeussen’s rule is the name for a special case of tone
reduction in Bantu languages
. The tonal alternation it describes is the lowering in some contexts of the last tone of a pattern of two adjacent High tones (HH), resulting in the pattern HL. The phenomenon is named after its first observer, the Bantuist Achilles Emile Meeussen (1912–1978). In phonological
terms, the phenomenon can be seen as a special case of the Obligatory Contour Principle
.
(examples adapted from Philippson 2003).
In the first sentence, both the tense marker 'rá' and the verb form 'báriira' (to sew) carry a high tone, signified by the acute accent
. They are separated by the pronominal marker 'zi'. In the second sentence, the pronominal marker ‘zi’ is left out, resulting in two adjacent High tones. Due to the phenomenon described by Meeussen’s rule, the second High tone changes into a Low tone.
This examples show a way of deriving
from place names nouns with the meaning ‘a person originating from’. In the first example, the place name bukéeye has a High tone on the second syllable. The junction with umuɲá (‘person from’) has no influence on this tone. In the second example, a place name with a High tone on the first syllable is used. Like above, the second High tone of the resulting pattern of two adjacent High tones is changed into a Low tone due to the phenomenon described by Meeussen’s rule.
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
reduction in Bantu languages
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
. The tonal alternation it describes is the lowering in some contexts of the last tone of a pattern of two adjacent High tones (HH), resulting in the pattern HL. The phenomenon is named after its first observer, the Bantuist Achilles Emile Meeussen (1912–1978). In phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
terms, the phenomenon can be seen as a special case of the Obligatory Contour Principle
Obligatory Contour Principle
The Obligatory Contour Principle is a phonological hypothesis that states that consecutive identical features are banned in underlying representations.-Background considerations:...
.
Examples
Some illustrations of the phenomenon in KirundiKirundi
Kirundi, also known as Rundi, is a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language spoken by some 8.7 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda. It is the official language of Burundi...
(examples adapted from Philippson 2003).
In verb forms
- na-rá-zi-báriira (I-PAST-them.CL10-to sew) ‘I was sewing them’ (them refers to a classNoun classIn linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...
10 plural) - na-rá-bariira (I-PAST-to sew) ‘I was sewing’
In the first sentence, both the tense marker 'rá' and the verb form 'báriira' (to sew) carry a high tone, signified by the acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
. They are separated by the pronominal marker 'zi'. In the second sentence, the pronominal marker ‘zi’ is left out, resulting in two adjacent High tones. Due to the phenomenon described by Meeussen’s rule, the second High tone changes into a Low tone.
In noun forms
- bukéeye > umuɲábukéeye
- mwáaro > umuɲámwaaro
This examples show a way of deriving
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
from place names nouns with the meaning ‘a person originating from’. In the first example, the place name bukéeye has a High tone on the second syllable. The junction with umuɲá (‘person from’) has no influence on this tone. In the second example, a place name with a High tone on the first syllable is used. Like above, the second High tone of the resulting pattern of two adjacent High tones is changed into a Low tone due to the phenomenon described by Meeussen’s rule.