Open AccessThe Grammatical Function of Papiamentu Tone
Author(s) -
Silvia Kouwenberg
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of portuguese linguistics/journal of portuguese linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2397-5563
pISSN - 1645-4537
DOI - 10.5334/jpl.11
Subject(s) - tone (literature) , linguistics , property (philosophy) , function (biology) , phonology , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology , evolutionary biology , biology
I propose that tone in Papiamentu is a marker of the morphosyntactic category of a given form. Its primary function, therefore, is grammatical. This account of Papiamentu tone differs from previously proposed accounts, which treat tone in Papiamentu as a lexical property (Römer, 1991; Rivera-Castillo, 1998) or as a purely phonological property (Devonish & Murray, 1995)