LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF WORLD CLASS TONAL LANGUAGE

Abstract

The varieties found in Anaang tones give world class beautiful rendition to the language almost as the sulfa notation in music. Anaang language belongs to the Benue Congo sub-family group of languages of Niger Congo as Stated by Greensberg (1963). Tones play a major role in the definition and understanding of Anaang language because a change in the tone produces a change in the meaning. Therefore, in this study personal .intuition as an Anaang indigene and speaker comes to play. To confirm this work, we used a voice tape to interview twenty Anaang indigenes resident in the speech community randomly. Eventually, it was realized that the tone in Anaang varies from low-High, low-low, High-High, low-High-High-low, low-High - High, High-low - low, low,  high- high- high, high- low-low- low etc. Moreover, in the tonal process, we have discovered the presence of down down-drift, tonal deletion, realignment and down-glide. In further investigation, we realized that the intonation in Anaang plays a great significant effect in classifying the sentences from declarative to the exclamatory ones.