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.^[12] (In this article, a plateau is shown by underlining.)

• Kámpálâ '(the city of) 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 (mora) 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:^[13]

• 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'^[10]
• ebitabo kkúmi 'ten books'^[11]

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 (the phrasal tones are shown here by being underlined):

• ebítábó 'books'
• mu mambúká 'in the north'^[8]

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

• Tóró [ttóóró] '(the kingdom of) Toro'^[14]
• ggwé [ggwéé] 'you (sg.)'
• ssóméró 'it is a school'^[15]

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

• yéé 'yes'^[16]

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 (which is the phrasal tone) is a little lower than the first.^[17]

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'^[18]
• túgendá mú lúgúúdó 'we are going into the street'^[19]
• ayágálá ókúlímá ámátóóké 'he wants to cultivate bananas'^[9]

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.^[20]

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'^[21]
• 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.^[22] 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'^[23]
• ssóméro? 'is it a school?'^[24]

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?'^[24]

Another type of intonational tone is an upglide sometimes heard just before a pause mid-sentence. It is referred to by Stevick (1968) as 'comma intonation',^[19] 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,^[25] using a relative construction (e.g. 'books are what I want'), using a negative construction (e.g., 'what I want, is it not books?') and others.^[26]

Lexical tone plateauing

As noted above, the usual pattern with words containing lexical tones is for each word in a series to be a little lower-pitched than the one before. However, in some circumstances two lexical tones are on the same level and form a plateau.^[28]

Phrasal tone plateauing

In contrast to lexical tones, words with a phrasal tone very easily make a plateau with the following word, as the following examples show (the plateaus are indicated by underlining):

• mu mambúká gá Úgáńda 'in the north of Uganda'^[8]
• avá mú Búgáńda 'he comes from Buganda'^[40]
• abántú mú kíbúga 'people in the city'^[18]
• mu kyaló Másíńdi 'in the village of Masindi'^[18]
• ebíjáńjááló byé bááúzzê 'the beans that they bought'^[18]
• ayágálá ókúlímá ámátóóké 'he wants to cultivate bananas'^[9]

The phrasal high tone at the end of words like túgendá 'we are going' also forms a plateau in the same way, for example:

• túgendá mú lúgúúdó 'we are going into the street'^[19]
• báfumbé émmére 'they are cooking emmére (staple food)'^[41]
• amalwáalíró ámákúlu 'large hospitals'^[41]

Note that in these examples, it is not the lexical tone of words like túgendá, which forms a plateau with the high tone which follows, but the phrasal tone at the end of the word. So there is first downdrift in túgendá and then a plateau.

In a sentence like the following, in which an HLH word like túgendá is used in a 'verb + location' sentence where the location has a lexical tone, according to Stevick, the plateau in such sentences starts with the lexical tone. However, the speaker on the recordings of the Luganda Basic Course in sentences of this kind makes a plateau starting only with the second tone, so that there is a downstep first then a plateau:

• túgéndá mú Úgáńda 'we are going to Uganda' (according to Stevick)^[42]
• túgendá mú Úgáńda 'we are going to Uganda' (as read on the recordings)^[43]

Phrasal tone downdrift

A phrasal tone is usually followed by a plateau, which continues either to the next high tone or, if there is no high tone, to the end of the phrase. Nonetheless, there are some kinds of phrases where the phrasal tones continue only as far as the end of the word, followed by a low tone. The following high tone is lower than the phrasal tone (i.e., there is catathesis or downdrift).

An example of these types of phrases is when a noun is followed by the pronominal words banó 'these', abó 'the aforesaid', bonnâ 'all', or yekkâ 'alone' (or their equivalents in other noun classes), e.g.^[29]

• abántú banó 'these people'
• abántú abó 'the aforementioned people'
• abántú bonnâ 'all people'
• omúntú yekkâ 'the person alone'
• amátóóké anó bonnâ 'all those bananas'

However, there is plateauing before demonstrative adjectives of the -li type:

• abántú bálî 'those people'^[18]

Two other contexts where there is downdrift after a phrasal tone word are before nga 'when, if, as' and before nti meaning 'that':^[29][44]

• báánumyá nga bálya 'they talked as they were eating'
• agámbá nti 'he says that...'

(The word nga in this context is toneless, but before a noun it has a tone: ngá sukkáali 'like sugar'.^[41] It also has a tone when it means 'how...!': ngá wano bulúńgi! 'how beautiful it is here!'^[24])

There is a similar downstep after a personal pronoun in phrases like the following:

• nzé Mukásá 'I am Mukasa'^[45]
• ggwé aní? [ggwáaní] 'who are you?'^[46]

Morae

One way of explaining these facts is to analyse Luganda words as consisting of morae or moras, that is, speech segments each lasting a certain time. According to this analysis, a short vowel has one mora and a long vowel has two morae. A 'long' consonant such as gg, mb, or ly also has one mora. Thus the third syllable gâ of Abagândá can be said to be long by position, since it has two morae, one belonging to itself and the other 'borrowed from' or 'shared with' the prenasalised consonant that follows. A long syllable can have a falling tone, with the first mora high and the second mora low.

Certain accommodations must be made to make the model fit. For example, an initial syllable starting with a vowel always counts as one mora, even in words like ensî 'country' where the vowel is long and followed by a prenasalised consonant.^[52]

No syllable can have more than two morae.^[27] For example, the second syllable of omwéngé 'beer' has only two, despite starting with mw and being followed by a prenasalised consonant.

Final vowels

Final vowels are usually pronounced short, but in some words (including all words with monosyllabic stems) the vowel becomes long before a suffix, for example ensî: kí? 'which country?'.^[53][54] Final vowels that can become long are considered to have two morae. Certain other final vowels, such as the final -é of the subjunctive mood, are considered to have one mora.^[55]

A final vowel therefore, if it is not toneless, can either have a high tone on the second mora (e.g. emú: 'one') or on the first mora (e.g. mwendâ 'nine'),^[56] or on its single mora (muyingiré 'please come in').^[13] All three of these, when at the end of a sentence, are pronounced with a falling tone. In other contexts they have different pronunciations. For example, before the suffix kí 'what?' a tone on the first mora of a bimoraic final vowel falls: (ensî kí? 'what country?')^[57] but a tone on the last mora will remain high (tukolé kí? 'what should we do?').^[13]

If a word ends in a falling tone, the tone becomes an ordinary high tone in some circumstances. One of these is when it is the subject of a sentence:

• Kámpálá kibúga 'Kampala is a city'^[58]
• bonná bawalâ? 'are all of them girls?'^[11]

Another is before a quantity word:

• balugú múńgi 'many yams'^[9]

Although there are now two high tones in adjacent syllables, nonetheless a downstep still occurs just as if the L part of the falling tone were still audible, so that in the above phrase mú is slightly lower in pitch than gú.

Toneless nouns

Judging from the numbers in the word list at the end of the Luganda Basic Course, about one third of all nouns (32%) in Luganda are underlyingly toneless. However, when pronounced in isolation, they have phrasal tones on all but the first mora (counting en- at the beginning of a word as one mora), as follows:

• ekítábó 'book'
• essóméró 'school'
• omúntú 'person'
• engáttó 'shoe(s)'
• omúlímú 'work, job'
• omúlénzí 'boy'
• akámwá 'mouth'
• olúpápúlá 'paper'
• enté 'cow(s)'
• envá 'relish'
• amátá 'milk'

Penultimate tone

Also very common, about 26% of the words, are nouns with a penultimate tone, that is on the second mora from the end of the word. If the penultimate syllable is long, as in enyáńja 'lake', both moras are high-toned. What all these nouns have in common is that the last vowel cannot take a phrasal tone. Examples are:

• entébe 'chair'
• ekibúga 'city'
• embúzi 'goat'
• ekikópo 'cup'
• omukóno 'hand, arm'
• enyáńja 'lake'
• ensíḿbi 'money'
• kááwa 'coffee'

Antepenultimate tone

Nouns with a high tone on the third mora from the end of the word (e.g., akagáali 'bicycle') are also common, and the various types listed below account for at least 25% of the vocabulary.

When used before a pause, or before a pronominal word like banó 'these' or bonnâ 'all' (see above) these words acquire a phrasal tone on the final syllable:

• akagáalí akó 'that bicycle'^[59]

However, in other contexts no phrasal tone is added, and there is no plateau with the following word:

• omwáaka ogúyísê 'last year'^[60]
• sáánywedde mázzi ku kankyâ 'I didn't drink water for breakfast'.^[61]

Contrast the following example, where the phrasal tone of matá 'milk' makes a plateau with the following word.^[61]

• sáánywedde matá kú kánkyâ 'I didn't drink milk for breakfast'

Some nouns of this type are:

• amáasó 'eyes'
• omwâná 'child'
• omwâká 'year'
• omwêzí 'month'
• enyáanyá 'tomatoes'
• amâzzi 'water'
• cáayi 'tea'
• ssukáari 'sugar'
• akagáali 'bicycle'
• emméeri 'ship'
• ekitûndu 'part'
• erînnya 'name'
• Abagânda 'Baganda people'

To these can be added a few nouns with the tone on the antepenultimate syllable, which are all marked by Stevick as HLL:

• ebugwáńjuba 'west'
• ebuváńjuba 'east'
• ekíbala 'fruit'
• ekkólero 'workshop'
• omusómesa 'teacher'

Hyman draws attention to the word ekíbala ('fruit'), which is unusual in having an accent on the class-prefix. He suggests that this is either because it may be a borrowing from another Ugandan language, Soga, or because it is a derivative of the verb -bála ('bear fruit').^[37]

A few nouns (mostly foreign) have a double tone followed by LL:

• Áméreka 'America'
• Omusíráamu 'Muslim'
• Olufálánsa 'French (language)'
• ennímáawa 'lemon' (Portuguese limão)
• amatáfáali 'brick'^[62]

Falling tone on the final

About 9% of the nouns have a falling tone on the final. The shorter of these nouns (up to three moras) have a single tone:

• ensî 'country'
• eggî 'egg'
• embwâ 'dog'
• balugû 'yam(s)'
• omutî 'tree'

The longer nouns have a second tone earlier in the word, which links into a plateau:

• ekibíínâ 'class'
• ekkómérâ 'prison'
• olubááwô 'board'
• eddúúkâ 'shop'
• ekyéńkyâ 'breakfast'
• obukííkâ 'direction'

A less common pattern is for a noun to have a tone on the penultimate and the final:^[63][64]

• mugóbâ 'driver'
• musíkâ 'heir'

Other patterns

A very few words (about 2%) have the tone far enough from the end of the word to allow for two phrasal tones following the HL of the lexical tone:

• amasérengétá 'the south'
• eddwâlíró 'hospital'

Other patterns are possible, for example Olwókusatú 'Wednesday' (ending in HLLL), but these patterns account for only a small percentage of the nouns.

Variable tone nouns

Certain words in Luganda have a high tone on the third mora, and the tone shifts to the following mora when the word is used without its initial vowel:^[65]

• Abagânda 'Baganda people' - Bagáńda 'they are Baganda'
• omusómesa 'teacher' - musomésa 'he is a teacher'
• omuwála 'girl' - muwalâ 'she is a girl'
• omutámiivu 'drunkard' - mutamíivu 'he is a drunkard'

Hyman and Katamba note that the same alternations take place in certain verb tenses:

• agulâ 'he who buys' - abigúla 'he who buys them'
• alagíra 'he who commands' - atulágira 'he who commands us'
• ayáámba 'he who helps' - atuyáamba 'he who helps us'

A similar alternation occurs in numbers 1-5, and in the words for 'yours' and 'his', with two differences: firstly the tone comes on the second mora, and secondly with a monosyllabic stem, the tone on the final is not deleted:

• bisátu - ebísatu 'three (e.g. books)'
• binâ - ebínâ 'four'
• bibyô - ebíbyô 'your ones (e.g. books)'

A few foreign nouns (mostly from Swahili) are also irregular, in that they have an extra tone in the plural or in the diminutive where the prefix has an extra syllable:^[64]

• bbakúli 'bowl' - plural mabákúli 'bowls'
• gguníya 'sack' - plural magúníya 'sacks'
• kkaláamu 'pen, pencil' - plural makáláamu
• mbaláasi 'horse' - diminutive kabáláasi 'little horse'

High and low-toned verbs

Like many Bantu languages, Luganda has high-toned and low-toned verbs. In the infinitive, low-toned verbs have the usual phrasal tones on all but the first mora:

• okúsá 'to grind'
• okwérá 'to sweep'
• okúggálá 'to shut'
• okújjá 'to come'
• okúlíndá 'to wait'
• okúsómá 'to study, read'
• okúsómésá to teach'
• okúgúlá 'to buy'

High-toned verbs (which are about 60% of verbs) have a high tone on the mora immediately following the infinitive prefix oku-. Phrasal tones are added only in the case of longer verbs:

• okulyâ 'to eat'
• okunywâ 'to drink'
• okutúma 'to send'
• okulába 'to see'
• okukóla 'to work, to do'
• okufúna 'to get, obtain'
• okuyîmbá 'to sing'
• okutândíká 'to begin'
• okuyîngírá 'to enter'

Meeussen's rule (HH > HL)

Verbs in Luganda are particularly affected by a rule known as Meeussen's rule, which is common in many African languages, whereby a sequence of tones HH becomes HL. Similarly HHH becomes HLL and HHHH becomes HLLL. (This rule does not affect nouns in Luganda.)

Thus *bá-lí-lába 'they will see' theoretically has three high tones, one for the prefix bá- 'they', one for the future tense-marker -lí-, and one for the verb-stem itself lába 'see'. However, after the operation of Meeussen's rule, and the addition of a phrasal tone, it changes as follows:^[78]

• *bá-lí-lába > bálilabá 'they will see'

The important point here is that a phrasal tone cannot be added (except on the very last syllable before a pause) to any syllable that formerly had a high tone. Thus in the above word bálilabá the remaining lexical tone on bá is followed not by one low-toned syllable, but by two.

Hyman and Katamba give the following examples to illustrate how a lowered H cannot acquire a phrasal tone or form a plateau:^[21]

• bálilabá ébíkópo 'they will see cups' (with a plateau), where bálilaba is derived from *bálílába
• abálilaba ebikópo 'they who will see cups' (with downdrift), where abálilaba is derived from *abálílábá

To make sense of the tones of Luganda verbs therefore, it is necessary to consider not only what tones the verb actually has, but also the underlying tones it had before the operation of Meeussen's rule.

Tones in tenses

Various elements add a tone to verbs:^[79]

• The tone of the subject prefix. This usually has a tone if it is a diphone (consisting of two phonemes) such as bá- 'they', tú- 'we', kí- 'it' etc, but usually toneless if it is monophonic (consisting of one phoneme), e.g. a- 'he/she', n- 'I', o- 'you (sg.)' etc. (For an exception see below on relative clause verbs.)
• The tone of the tense-marker. The tense-markers -á- (Near Past), -náa- (Near Future), -lí- (General Future), -kyá- ('still') all add a tone, while -a- (Far Past) adds a tone in the following syllable. (The tense-markers -nna- 'not yet' and -aaka- 'just' do not add a tone; there is also no tone in the ending -nga used to make the habitual aspect.)
• The tone of the verb-stem, if it is high-toned. In the Infinitive and General Future this tone is on the first mora only, but in the Present tense it affects the first two moras.
• The tone of the negative marker. The 1st person negative marker sí- has its own tone. The negative marker with other persons is te-, which adds a tone on the following syllable. In relative-clause verbs the negative marker is -tá-.
• In addition, many tenses add a grammatical tone on the final syllable. In longer verbs, in some cases this tone may move to the penultimate syllable.

Having added these tones, the following rules apply:

• Any sequence HLH (HLLH, HLLLH) becomes a plateau by the plateauing rule, for example tebágulá becomes tebágúlâ 'they do not buy'.
• Any sequence HH (HHH, HHHH) becomes HL (HLL, HLLL) by Meeussen's rule, unless there is a plateau; for example bálábá becomes bálaba 'they see'.
• Phrasal tones are added to the end of the verb, except that:

(a) A phrasal tone is not added to any syllable with the tone deleted by Meeussen's rule, except at the end of a sentence or before pronominal words such as bonnâ 'all'.

(b) A phrasal tone also does not directly follow the General Future infix -lí- in low-toned verbs, even if the tone of -lí- is deleted.

Relative clause verbs

Relative clause verbs have a different intonation from ordinary verbs in Luganda. They are more commonly used than in English, since as Crabtree pointed out (1902) they are used for emphasis.^[80] For example, instead of 'who bought things?' a Luganda-speaker would say 'which are the ones who bought things?'

• bakí abágúzé ebintu?^[81]

Similarly, instead of 'he went to Buganda to teach', a Luganda-speaker might say 'what he went to Buganda for is to teach':^[82]

• yágéndá mú Búgáńda kusómésá 'what he went to Buganda for is to teach'

An initial vowel is usually added before diphone subject-prefixes such as bá- (e.g. abágúlâ 'they who buy'), but not before monophonic prefixes such as a-. However, this initial vowel disappears in certain contexts, such as the second example above.

In object clauses, such as the following, a toneless prefix acquires a tone:^[83]

• emmére gye áfúḿba 'the staple food that she is cooking'

But when an object copula is used as in the following sentence, both kinds of prefix lose their tone:

• emmére gye bafúḿba 'the staple food is what they are cooking'.

The word gwe, ge, bye etc. itself usually has no tone. However, the rules for such clauses can be complex.^[84]

Examples of tenses

The tables that follow give examples of six commonly used tenses, together with the subjunctive mood and some comments on each. In the tables two verbs are used, -gula 'buy' and -lába 'see', as examples of low and high-toned verbs respectively.^[85]