Silozi verbal tonology

Abstract Silozi is one of Zambia’s seven national languages, and is also spoken in parts of Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. At its heart the language can fairly be characterized as a “Shift and Double” one, where an underlying High tone shifts to the following TBU and then doubles onto the next one in defined prosodic domains. Both infinitival forms as well as a range of finite forms in various TAMs are examined. The Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) plays an interesting role in that while it motivates various processes of High tone deletion, it only rarely constrains the core processes of Tone Shift and Tone Doubling. Some of the High tone deletions are general while others only apply in specific TAMs. As in most Bantu tone languages, Silozi exhibits Melodic High tones which help express certain inflectional properties of the verb. They have two possible landing sites – the penult or the ultima. Once linked, they precipitate the deletion of various lexical High tones on the Subject Marker, Object Marker, or verb root. In all, eleven different tonal rules are described and analyzed.