This talk will discuss the central intonational patterns in Bemba (Central Bantu) that correlate to different kinds of declarative sentences and questions. Specifically, the intonational features of final lowering, pitch range expansion and pitch register raising will be discussed to illustrate the most robust intonational patterns of the language, following Kula & Hamann (2017). The talk particularly looks at pre-focus expansion which suggests a less common pattern of focus marking in verb forms and whose prosody contrasts with the patterns of phonological phrasing in Bemba as shown in Kula and Bickmore (2015). Pre-focus expansion contrasts with post-focal compression as discussed in other works (see e.g. Kugler 2017, in prep) and will be shown to not necessarily co-occur or be mutually dependent. The talk will aim to discuss possible resolutions to the resulting mismatch between prosody and phonology, which will require a recasting of phonological phrasing.
Prochains événements
Voir la liste d'événementsSRPP 30/01/2026 Alexei Kochetov
Alexei Kochetov (University of Toronto)
SRPP 06/02/2026 Cédric Patin
Cédric Patin (Université de Lille)
SRPP 20/02/2026 Takayuki Nagamine
Takayuki Nagamine (UCL)


