Examining the status of tone in Cinyambwa

This study intends to examine the status of tone in Cinyambwa. Primary data for this study were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions while secondary data were collected from written documents. The study involved ten (10) Cinyambwa speakers as a sample to represent the whole population of Cinyambwa speakers. The collected data were analyzed using the autosegmental analysis approach whereby major concepts of the study were examined and analyzed. The findings revealed that Cinyambwa has only level tone (low and high) but no contour tone. The low tone is dominant throughout Cinyambwa words. This is an indication that the lexical tone has been lost as lexical meanings cannot be contrasted by tone. The function of the lost tone remains in the hands of morphological markers like the derivative morphemes. Thus Cinyambwa has reached into the stress-accent group of languages. Apart from that, Cinyambwa still shows grammatical tone in expressing remote past tense and command. The existence of the grammatical tone is also about to disappear due to the threat posed by derivational morphemes, which perform the same functions as the high tone. This is evident when Cinyambwa speakers prefer to use derivational morphemes rather than the high tone. This trend of tone loss shows that the status of tone in Cinyambwa is in the advanced stages of tone loss and not in between as suggested by other Bantu linguists.