The Study of Tone in Kinguu Infinitive Verbs

Abstract

This paper studied tone on Kinguu infinitive verbs; the study was guided by three objectives which were to describe tone in simple infinitive verbs, to describe tone in complex infinitive verbs and to establish tonological rules which govern tone assignment in Kinguu infinitives. The infinitives were studied in isolation and the study used the Autosegmental theory which was introduced by GoldSmith 1976. The method used in data collection was person interview of which the researcher guided the informants on the prepared corpus of Kiswahili infinitives to be pronounced in Kinguu by the Kinguu speakers,and then the pronunciations were recorded for marking tone. The main behavior observed in Kinguuinfinitive tones is that there is High tone spread, shifting and penultimate back hopping.