Venda: Tonal structure and intonation

Review Article

“…The most complete and systematic account of tone in Venda has been given by Westphal (1962). It is clear from his description that lexical tones of verbs and noh-compoimd nouns should be described in terms of a twotone System, i.e.…”

“…He Contents himself with the observation that there are but two tonal types of infinitives (which is true), and he uses no examples that are likely members of the third type such äs -vhäda. TEDV follows Westphal and distinguishes two types only: Westphal 1962 TEDV 1967…”

“…According to Rycroft and Ngcobo (1979: Bll), verbs "are of three tonal types ... in the KwaZulu dialect (and in Xhosa) but only two ... in the Natal dialect of Zulu". For Xhosa (S.41), the existence of a third tonal type of CVC verbs had first been asserted by Guthrie (1948: 69), and then more fully described by Westphal (1951); it had generally been denied for Zulu but this -it appears now -is a question of dialect. Tonally, ZED represents the Natal dialect, which is not merely an unfortunate choice but is also contrary to the authors' claim (ZED p. XV; cf.…”