ABSTRACT
In light of the present-day emphasis on language documentation and description, this chapter on tone and tonology in African languages focusses on a much neglected but very necessary aspect of the topic, namely grassroots fieldwork on tone. Such basic fieldwork is an obvious necessity in order to analyze the tonal system of a language. Before doing fieldwork on tone, the researcher needs to acquire an amount of background knowledge in the domain, which will help him to interpret and analyze his data. This chapter contains both general information about tone languages, particularly regarding typological insights, as well as a practical methodology for doing fieldwork. Listening, mimicking, and learning to hear tone are helpful skills. Various ways of transcribing tone are discussed. The distinction between surface and underlying tones is very important, and floating tones as well as toneless morphemes are discussed. A practical methodology for data gathering is imperative before attempting to analyze the tone system of a language, and a typological background will help in making hypotheses when doing tone analysis. The contrastive function of tone in the lexicon and in the grammar will most likely emerge automatically. Then, there are topics like depressor consonants as well as various frequently occurring tone rules and register phenomena that may operate in a language under study. Finally, a brief chronological overview is given of the development of theoretical approaches to the analysis of the tone system of a language.
