Tonal system of Looma language: The Woi-Balagha dialect

The aim of the present paper is to describe the tonal system of Looma (South-Western Mande). For a language like Looma, with its intricate system of tonal interactions, such a description supposes the identification of lexical tones of morphemes and establishment of the sequence of rules applied to them. The task is complicated by the fact that in the quotation form, the majority of nouns and verbs in Looma are realized with a high tone imparted to them by the high-tone referent article. Thus, in order to detect the lexical tone of a word, one has to place it in a specific context. In the paper, tonal classes of words of the main morphological classes are singled out; for each of them, the tonal behavior in the phrases of different types is described. It is demonstrated, that the only phrase where no tonal interaction of the components is observed is the numeral phrase. In all the other successions of morphemes, be it a phrase or a word form, the lexical tones of morphemes can be successively replaced by grammatical, lexical and surface tone of the preceding morphemes. The extent of the tone spreading may be conditioned by the consonant structure of the morpheme.