Meeussen's rule (Meeussen's rule) is the name of a special case of tone reduction in the Bantu languages. The tone change described herein consists in decreasing (→ L) the last tone of two consecutive high tones (HH) in some contexts, resulting in the pattern HL. The phenomenon is named after the bantu Achille Emile Meeussen (1912-1978), who described the phenomenon for the first time. In phonological terms, the phenomenon can be seen as a special case of the Obligatory Contour Principle. Examples
Some illustrations of this in the Kirundi (examples adapted from Philippson 2003):
In verb forms
In the first word both the indication of the past time (rá) and the verb (báriira) have a high tone, indicated by the accent aigu. This is the personal infix zi. In the second word this zi does not occur, so that two high tones follow each other. The Meeussen rule changes the second to a low pitch.
In nominal forms
This example shows a derivation of place names that results in a word meaning "someone who comes from ...". In the first example, Bukéeye has a high tone on the second syllable. Compiling with umuɲá ("someone of") does not change anything here. In the second example, the place name Mwáaro has a high pitch on the first syllable, which is low due to a different high pitch.
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