Luganda tones

, the language spoken by the Baganda people from Central Uganda, is a tonal language of the Bantu family. It is traditionally described as having three tones: high, low and falling. Rising tones are not found in Luganda, even on long vowels, since a sequence such as automatically becomes .
Tones perform various functions in Luganda: they help to distinguish one word from another, they distinguish one verb tense from another, and they are also used in sentence intonation, for example, to distinguish a statement from a question.
The complexity of the Luganda tonal system has attracted the attention of numerous scholars, who have sought ways of describing Luganda tones most economically according to different linguistic models.

Overview

In Luganda some words have a lexical tone: ekibúga 'city', omusómesa 'teacher'. The tone can be a falling one: ensî 'country', omwâna 'child', eddwâliro 'hospital'. Some words have a double tone or a tone spread across three syllables in a plateau: mugób'â 'driver', ekkó'mérâ 'prison'. In some nouns the tone moves position: omuwála 'girl', but muwalâ 'she is a girl'.
Other words, such as ekitabo 'book', omuntu 'person', amata 'milk', or Mbarara, are underlyingly toneless. However, toneless words usually receive automatic default tones, called phrasal tones, on all syllables except the first: ekítábó, omúntú. But in some circumstances this phrasal tone does not appear, for example, when the word is the subject of a sentence or qualified by a number. The automatic phrasal tones are not as high-pitched as lexical tones.
Automatic phrasal tones are also added at the end of lexically-toned words. In nouns the phrasal tones begin on the syllable immediately after the fall in pitch, e.g. eddwâlíró 'hospital', masérengétá 'south'. Again, these phrasal tones do not appear when the word is used as the subject of the sentence or qualified by a number.
However, in some verbal forms the phrasal tones do not begin immediately after the accent but after an interval of two or three low-toned syllables, e.g. bálilabá 'they will see'. This complexity prevents Luganda from being described as a simple pitch-accent language.
Verbs are divided into two tonal classes, those with a tone, such as okulába 'to see', and those that are toneless apart from the automatic phrasal tone, such as okúsómá 'to read'. Verbs are subject to a series of complex tonal patterns, which vary according to tense and whether the verbs are high-toned or toneless, positive or negative, or used in a main clause or relative clause.

Common intonational patterns

Although there are many complexities of detail, there are certain types of intonational pattern which occur regularly. One common pattern is for sentences to have a gradual descent from the first high tone to the last, as in the following:

kye kibúga ekikúlu mu Ugáńda 'it is the chief city in Uganda'

The three high tones ú, ú, and áń stand out prominently from the other syllables, and each one is a little lower than the last, as if coming down in a series of steps. The toneless syllables between are lower in pitch than the high tones. This descent, which is known as downdrift, 'automatic downstep', or 'catathesis', is common in many African languages whenever tones come in a sequence HLH.
Another type of tonal pattern very common in Luganda is the high tone plateau. In this pattern, two high tones are at the same level, and the voice remains continuously high from one the other. A plateau can occur between two lexical tones, as in the following example:

kírí mú Úgáńda 'it is in Uganda'

A plateau also often occurs between a phrasal tone and lexical tone, or between two phrasal tones:

mu mambúká gá Úgáńda 'in the north of Uganda'
ayágálá ókúlímá ámátóóké 'he wants to cultivate bananas'

A third type of tonal pattern, not quite so common, is to have a series of low tones followed by a jump to a high one:

Mbarara kibúga 'Mbarara is a city'
ebitabo kkúmi 'ten books'

These three tonal patterns occur regularly in Luganda sentences, and much of the description below concerns when to use one and when another.

Types of tone

There are various types of high tone in Luganda, of which lexical, grammatical and phrasal tones are the most important. To these can be added boundary tones and other tones indicating intonation.

Lexical tones

Lexical high tones are those that go with particular words, such as those on the words below:

ekibúga 'city'
ensî 'country'

When a word with final tone such as ensî 'country' is spoken in isolation or at the end of a sentence, the tone is always heard as a falling tone; but in other contexts, it is generally heard as an ordinary high tone.
Falling lexical tones can also be heard in non-final position:

eddwâlíró 'hospital'

Some words in Luganda have two lexical high tones. When this happens the two tones link into a plateau; that is, the syllables between are also raised.

Kámpálâ ' Kampala'
eddúúkâ 'shop'

A lexical tone, if it does not form a plateau with a following lexical tone, is always followed by a low tone. This low tone can either be in the following syllable, as in ekibúga 'city' or the second half of a syllable containing a falling tone, as in eddwâlíró 'hospital' or ensî 'country'.

Grammatical tones

A grammatical tone is one that arises when a verb is used in a particular tense. For example, a verb in the subjunctive mood always has a high or falling tone on the last syllable:

muyingirê 'you should come in, please come in'

In this article, to distinguish them from phrasal high tones, lexical and grammatical tones are marked in bold.

Phrasal tones

Phrasal tones are high tones automatically added to words in certain contexts. In other contexts, the same word may be pronounced without phrasal tones. For example, when a word without lexical tones is the subject of a sentence, or followed by a number or quantity word, it remains toneless:

Mbarara kibúga 'Mbarara is a city'
ebitabo kkúmi 'ten books'

But in most other contexts, or when spoken in isolation, the word has a high tone on all the syllables except the first mora of the word :

ebítábó 'books'
mu mambúká 'in the north'

A geminate consonant such as counts as one mora, and so if a word begins with a geminate consonant, the phrasal tone can begin immediately after it:

Tóró ' Toro'
ggwé 'you '
ssóméró 'it is a school'

Since a rising tone becomes a level high tone in Luganda, the following word also has a high tone throughout:

yéé 'yes'

Phrasal tones can also be added to the end of words that have a lexical high tone. However, between the lexical tone and the phrasal tones there must always be at least one low-toned syllable or mora:

túgendá 'we are going'
amasérengétá 'south'

If the lexical tone is a falling one, the second half the syllable with the tone counts as a low-toned mora, and the phrasal tones begin immediately on the following syllable:

eddwâlíró 'hospital'
abagândá 'Baganda people'

Whenever a word has a lexical as well as a phrasal tone like this, the lexical tone and the phrasal tone do not form a plateau but instead there is a sequence HLH. As with every sequence HLH, the second H is a little lower than the first.
A lexical or grammatical tone cannot form a plateau with a following phrasal tone; there is always at least one low-toned mora in between. However, a phrasal tone can very easily form a plateau with a following lexical tone or phrasal tone:

mu kyaló Másíńdi 'in the village of Masindi'
túgendá mú lúgúúdó 'we are going into the street'
ayágálá ókúlímá ámátóóké 'he wants to cultivate bananas'

More examples of this are given below, as well as exceptions where no plateau is formed.
Phrasal tones tend to be less prominent than lexical tones and pronounced at a lower pitch. Often in a sentence if a word with lexical tone is substituted for one with a phrasal tone, the pitch is higher.

Words containing HLL or HLLL

Normally between a lexical or grammatical high tone in Luganda and a phrasal tone, there is just one low-toned syllable or mora. However there are some words in which a high lexical or grammatical tone is followed not by one, but by two or even three low-toned syllables:

bálilabá 'they will see'
abálilaba 'they who will see'

The existence of such words greatly complicates the description of Luganda tones and has important implications for theoretical accounts of the language. These are further discussed below.

Intonational tones

As well as the types of tone mentioned above, there are also intonational tones such as those that distinguish a question from a statement. For example, if a toneless word asks a yes–no question, it has a low tone on the final syllable. Compare these two:

ssóméró 'it is a school'
ssóméro? 'is it a school?'

A question like the following has a rise-and-fall on the last vowel:

gwe gulí gwé ńnéngérá wálî? 'is it the one I see there?'

Another type of intonational tone is an upglide sometimes heard just before a pause mid-sentence. It is referred to by Stevick as 'comma intonation', and it is a kind of boundary tone.

Tones and emphasis

Luganda does not use tones for focus or emphasis. As Crabtree says, 'The tone in Luganda is level, therefore it is impossible to emphasize as in English.' Instead he lists some other ways a Luganda speaker can emphasise words, such as placing the important word first, omitting an initial vowel where it would normally be added, using a relative construction, using a negative construction and others.