Tone in Cindali

Recent studies on Bantu tone have benefited considerably from theoretical insights provided by Optimality Theory, particularly its sub-theory of alignment where it has been shown that morphologically assigned high tones in many accentual Bantu languages are aligned with morpho-phonological domains and that the surface distribution of these tones follows from the ranking of general constraints. This paper presents an analysis of similar high tone phenomena in the verbal system of Cindali and shows that the language has accentual features which are manifested through various distributional restrictions on high tones. It is argued that allomorphy in this language plays a significant role in the realization of high tones in penultimate and antepenultimate positions of tensed verbs. In Optimality Theoretic terms, this is shown to be accounted for through the interaction between universal constraints such as final foot high tone placement and allomorph-related constraints which are embedded within the “mini-grammars” of different tenses of the language. The analysis leads to the conclusion that although it is important in Optimality Theory to derive phonological properties of languages from universal constraints, there are still some grounds for recognizing morpheme-specific constraints.