Tone lowering in nominal compounds of Copala Triqui

Abstract

This paper examines the distribution of tone lowering in the nominal compounds of Copala Triqui (Otomanguean). We consider two types of compounds: fused compounds and unfused compounds, which differ with respect to their prosodic complexity. For both types of compounds, the second root noun lowers in some examples, while it maintains its lexically specified tone in others. In this paper, we consider the advantages and disadvantages of a lexical as compared to a structural approach to tone lowering. More specifically, tonal overlay may belong to either a categorical head or a specific syntactic configuration, as in McPherson (2014)’s description of tone overlay in the Dogon language family