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Pitch and duration of yes-no questions in Nchufie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Dani Byrd
Dani Byrd
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1543
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Extract

This paper will present a preliminary phonetic description of yes-no questions in Nchufie (also known as Bafanji), a Grassfields Bantoid language of the Nun group in the Mbam-Nkam family spoken in Northwestern Cameroon by approximately 8,500 people (Grimes 1988). As there is no published description of this language, a very brief review of the Nchufie segment inventory will be in order. Following this, an instrumental description of the yes-no questions in the language will be presented, focusing on the prosodic cues of duration and pitch. Of special interest will be the interaction of intonation with lexical tone and the representation and cross-linguistic significance of Nchufie yes-no question formation. Below is a brief description of the phonetic segment inventory of Nchufie. Due to the complexities of Nchufie phonology and tonology, the following description should be considered preliminary only; the details are not well understood.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 22 , Issue 1-2 , June 1992 , pp. 12 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1992

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