*
*Page 14: Mon Aug 6 16:45:53 2018
4. Falling Tone [ \ ]. This tone constitutes a glide from high to low
*made within a single syllable: compare the English word “house”
*spoken without any context.
* The mid-falls [ (4-1) ], [ (3-1) ], [ (2-1) ], indicate the same fall starting from the
*1st, 2nd or 3rd mid tone. The difference between these mid-falls and
*the falling variant of the low tone is probably one of stress. The mid-falls,
*corresponding to certain semantic or grammatical functions, are marked
*in this book, while the falling variant of the low tone is not (v. above).
*Both high-low and mid-low falls are often very elusive and often can
*only with difficulty be distinguished from high or mid tones.
* 5. Rising Tone [ / ]. This tone usually rises from low to mid only
*(v. above, the “lowered” variant of the high tone). In the perfect
*form of verbs with a rising tone the author is not certain whether the
*low start of the rise does not disappear entirely if an object or a verb
*follows; some speakers seem to use a high tone only: in H. G. Amadasu’s
*speech, however, there seemed to be a rise, the lower part of which
*was very short: e.g. ɔxa-ɽe “he said” [ ˩ ˥ ˦ ] or [ ˩ / ˦ ]. A rise from mid
*to high occurs in the last syllables of one type of questions and has
*been marked in a few cases.
* Rising-falling tones have been marked by [ / ‿ ˩ ], falling-rising tones
*by [ ˥ ‿ / ].
* ELISION AND CONTRACTION
* Elision of vowels has heen marked by a hyphen, e.g. kp-akpata [ / ˥ ˥ ]
*(from kpe [ / ] “to play” and akpata [ ˥ ˥ ˥ ] “harp”), and in difficult
*cases, especially in monosyllables, the full form has been given in brackets
*at the end of the example. Contraction of two vowels of the same quality
*has been marked in the same way, only one vowel being written.
*Nasalisation carried forward as a result of elision or contraction is
*shown by a tilde (～), even when the vowel thus marked follows a
*nasal. Where the group (verb＋noun object) is not given as a contracted
*or uncontracted whole with one tonal bracket, but each component
*separately, another object is usually found between the two components,
*e.g. mu [ ˥ ] ixo [ ˩ ˩ ] “to let blood”, ɔmu ʋ̃-ĩxo n-owiɛ [ ˩ ˥ ˩ ˩ \ ˥ ] “he let my
*blood this morning”. The sign ‿ under the line has been used freely
*in order to show that the final vowel of a word and the initial vowel of
*the next one may form one syllable. In such cases, as well as in those
*elisions in which a vowel is left on both sides of the hyphen, each vowel
*has its separate tone-mark in order to facilitate grammatical analysis,
*e.g. in ebi‿ɛba [ ˩ ˥ ˥ ˦ ] instead of [ ˩ ˥ ˦ ], or hɔ‿ukpɔ̃ [ ˩ ˥ ˩ ] instead of [ / ˩ ].
*Only one sign, however, has been written in words formed out of two
*separate elements, e.g. isiamɛ [ ˩ ˩ ˩ ] (si [ ˥ ]＋amɛ [ ˩ ˩ ]).
* The vowels given in brackets may, or may not be heard; they have
*xiv
