Syntactic Tones of Nouns in Bemba

This study is on This study is divided into four chapters where the first chapter discusses the introduction, the details on what has been studied and need to be studied under the literature review, the methodology, i.e. the techniques used in the analysis of the data collected, the second chapter presents the data as collected, the third chapter gives the findings of the investigation and the final chapter includes the summary and the recommendations of the study. This study investigates tones of nouns in citation form and nouns when used in different grammatical contexts. Thus, a sample of 100 nouns were picked and used in different syntactic frames to show how the tonal patterns change in different grammatical environments. This study is a descriptive study and was undertaken under a lot of difficulties. It is a study that was intended to be done on the nouns; but, other word classes were studied to give more conclusive findings. In addition, one may wish to say that this study was also primarily concerned with the phonological evidence. It apparently was relevant that the morphological and syntactic levels were to be taken into serious considerations to achieve conclusive findings.This study was based on the Standard Bemba or Central Bemba, a language commonly spoken in Kasama and the near surrounding areas. Two informants were chosen to assist in the compiling of the data from Kasama Bible Translation Centre. These informants were carefully chosen as they speak ‘Central Bemba’ the language most familiar with the investigator. Characteristically, the data consisted of citation forms i.e. words uttered in isolation, and then later, simple phrasese.g. nouns and adjectives or nouns and demonstratives, etc. The items were then recorded on tape before transcribing them into phonetic notation.Finally, this study was done under the objectives and research questions that were especiallydesigned. And, other than using the informants to read the lists aloud and recording them, it was also important to the investigator to observe conversations as one speaks in the natural environment to capture the specified tonal patterns of the particular language.