Ngamo is a Chadic language spoken in northeastern Nigeria, with two major
dialects, Yaya and Gudi. The Yaya dialect has generally preserved tone
patterns reconstructable for the common ancestor of Ngamo and its close
genetic sister languages, Bole and Karekare. The Gudi dialect,
however, has shifted all the original tones one tonal domain to the right
(assuming a left-to-right transcription), associating a low tone with the
vacated initial domain and shifting the original final tone to the right as
a floating tone. What is remarkable in the Great Ngamo Tone Shift (GNTS) is
that the tonal domains may range from one mora to multiple syllables, and
the shifted tones always occupy the some domains as their original
right-hand neighbors. The talk will address a number of issues that the
GNTS raises: how might such a shift have taken place? is the shift
reflected in the synchronic phonology of Gudi Ngamo or is comparative
evidence the only way to know that anything ever happened to tones in
Ngamo?
If time permits, the talk will make a brief foray into a constraint-based
account, suggesting that faithfulness constraints apply not only to the
tonal and segmental make up of a form, but also to the association lines
linking tones to segments.
