Duhumbi Phonology - Pitch and Tone

Duhumbi is classified as a non-tonal language. Unlike several Central and East Bodish languages, in Duhumbi, distinctive tone cannot be conclusively attested even on the most common consonants affected by tone, namely the nasals /n, m, ng, ny/ and the approximants /l, r, w, y/. Nonetheless, Duhumbi clearly shows the first signs of the development of distinctive tone, or at least a distinctive pitch contrast. There are five main phonotactic conditions in which pitch distinctions can be observed, of which some form of glottalisation is the main one. The distinctive glottal constricted vowels /a, e, o, u/ in open syllables all have a rising pitch. The same holds for pre-glotallised initial vowels. Also, a high-falling pitch contour can be shown to be triggered by glottal reinforcement of syllable-final plosives. In addition, a high-falling versus low-level contour pitch contrast has been observed between lexemes with unaspirated unvoiced, aspirated unvoiced and unaspirated voiced plosive onsets. Finally, of the few attested contrastive minimal pairs for tone, the high onset/high-falling pitch lexemes of these minimal pairs can be shown to have Bodish cognates with a high onset, and the pitch contrast may thus be presumed to be borrowed as phonological feature of the entire lexeme.

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