Tones and paradigms: a study of grammatical tones in Mande verbal inflection

Abstract This paper explores how grammatical tones (GTs) are organized into inflectional paradigms in a sample of 20 Mande languages (Niger-Congo), where tonal morphology plays a central role in the expression of TAMP meanings. Adopting the Canonical Typology approach, I assess the degree of canonicity in Mande GTs based on their formal and semantic properties. I show that verbal grammatical tones are mainly realized as replacive in Mande; they are independent from segmental morphemes and may be strongly influenced by surface phonology. Verbal GTs tend to be used in idiosyncratic sets of TAMP constructions and form phonologically determined inflectional classes in Mande, as in many other African languages. I argue that GTs attested in Perfective and Irrealis constructions in modern Mande languages are likely to be an old phenomenon already present in Proto Mande. The consistency of morphological tone assignment in Mande verbs suggests that GTs may be genetically quite stable morphological markers.