The role of Discourse in the typology of downsteps: Evidence from Ebira and Ghotuo

Ebira and Ghotuo are three-tone languages of the Benue-Congo language family that have the downstep phenomenon. However, the behaviour of downstep in these languages goes beyond the scope of phonology. This paper reports that there are discourse factors that play significant roles in determining whether there is downstep or not in these languages. The factors include formality of speech, speech rate, and certain other sociolinguistic factors. This paper reports with experimental evidence that, depending on these factors, speakers of Ghotuo and Ebira can, and do, consciously block the phenomenon. Thus, it is argued that an adequate description of the phenomenon in the languages can only be achieved by relating it to the sociolinguistic factors already mentioned.