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The Abawiri Tone System in Typological Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Brendon Yoder
Brendon Yoder*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara and SIL International
*
[byoder@ucsb.edu]
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Abstract

Abawiri (Indonesia: Lakes Plain) is a previously undescribed Papuan language. Two level tones (/L/ and /H/) combine into eight tone melodies on nouns (/L/, /H/, /LH/, /HL/, /LH/, /LHL/, //, and ) and five on verbs (/L/, /H/, /LH/, /LH/, and ). The default pitch of tonelessness is L. Several phonological processes involve tone. /H/ is lowered to M tone after a floating /L/. A polar (H) is linked to the final syllable of a non-/H/ word previous to an /L/-toned word. Utterance-final boundary tone L% is linked to all utterance-final syllables. /H/ spreads to the end of nouns but does not spread on verbs. A final section discusses typological characterization of the Abawiri tone system.

Keywords

toneAbawiriPapuan languagestypology of tonetwo-height tone systemstonal polaritycategory-specific effects

Information

Type
Phonological Analysis
Information
Language , Volume 94 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. e266 - e292
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Linguistic Society of America

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