Syllable Structure and the Association of Tones in Koring

Abstract

Koring language belongs to the Upper-Cross group of the Delta Cross sub branch of the Cross River in the Niger Congo language family (Simons and Fenning (ed) 2017), spoken by the Oring people who live in parts of Ebonyi and Benue states. Primary and secondary sources are employed for data collection and autosegmental phonological framework adopted for analyses. Koring is a coda language with V, CV, and CVC syllable structures. Koring has two basic tones: the high and the low tones with non-distinctive falling and rising contour tones. Tones are associated only to the vowels of the language. Floating tones and contour tones are appropriately linked with reference to the Well-Formedness Condition (WFC). Contour tones in Koring are not distinctive but result by: collapsing of adjacent phonetic lengthened vowels on different pitch level, merging of a floating tone with a vowel at some point during derivation which passes its tonal specification to such vowel, resulting either to a glide or get simplified to same level tone. This is observed in “spreadingâ€, an autosegmental principle and language specific rule, where the toneless vowel /e/ representing the Koring article automatically acquires the tone which spreads to it from this preceding vowel.