Surface underspecification of tone in Chichewa

In Chichewa, a Bantu language spoken mainly in Malawi, there is a contrast between high and low tone, as illustrated by such minimal pairs as mtengo ‘price’ vs. mtengo ‘tree’. But there is a strong asymmetry between the two tones in their phonological behaviour: high tone is phonologically active, while low tone is phonologically inert. Tone changes occur in Chichewa only if there is a high tone present in the phrase; a phrase composed only of low-toned morphemes is always realised unchanged with all low tones. The tonal phonology of the language can be described completely without reference to low tone (Kanerva 1989), as is typical for the Bantu languages (Stevick 1969). I argue in this paper that this asymmetry is due to underspecification. The contrast in Chichewa is a privative one between high tone and no tone. Low tone is phonologically inert because it is simply the absence of tone. In particular, low tone is absent from surface representation. Syllables that are not specified as high-toned are assigned F0 by a non-linear transition function, as proposed for English intonation by Pierre-humbert (1980).

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