Polarity in a four-level tone language: tone features in Tenyidie

Abstract

This paper reports a new kind of tone polarity, where the phenomenon is seen in a language with four level tones, Tenyidie (also known as Angami). I show that the polarity is in the features of the tones, i.e. at a subtonal level. The data also provide evidence that tones themselves can be broken down into smaller features. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the polarity pattern observed in the language is an epiphenomenon, a reflex of the Obligatory Contour Principle, not a phonological process in its own right. I show this with the help of a new type of tonal representation. Theoretical discussions of tone polarity have so far been almost entirely restricted to African tone systems, and to languages with just two tones. This paper brings into the discussion a Tibeto-Burman language with four tones.