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. Mid tones
KBK KBK ‘rotten’ < BK BK ‘be rotten’ (Adj < Stat V)
‘sharp’ < E E E E ‘be sharp’ (Adj < Stat V)
K5K K5K ‘bitter’ < 5K 5K ‘be bitter’ (Adj < Stat V)
J5 J5 J5 J5 ‘delicious’ < J5 J5 J5 J5 ‘be tasty’ (Adj < Stat V)
‘soft’ < ‘be tired’ (Adj < Stat V)
(cf. ( ( ( ( (( (( (( (( ‘to laugh’)
‘thick’ < E E E E ‘grow, be thick’ (Adj < Intr V)
C>H C>H C>H C>H ‘big (plural)’ < C>H C>H‘grow’ C>H C>H
(Adj < Intr V)
@ @ @ @ ‘foolishness’ < @ @ @ @ ‘be foolish’ (N < Intr V)
‘day’ < ‘lie down’ (cf. ( ( ( ( ‘sleep’) (N < Intr V)
KK KK KK KK ‘person’
c. Low tones
< K K K K ‘give birth’ (N < Trans V)
M M M M ‘fire’ < M M M M ‘be hot’
(cf. BM BM BM BM ‘heat’)
(N < Stat V)
This process is best thought of as deverbalization rather than nominalization since
the resulting form is either a noun or a descriptive adjective, whereas the underived form
is always a verb.
Cloarec-Heiss (p. 126) and Kamanda (p. 281) both consider the reduplicated
vowel to be a prefix. 5 I question this interpretation for the following reason. The
epenthetic vowel only occurs with forms which can be analyzed as underlyingly
monosyllabic, e.g. KBK KBK < /BK BK BK/ BK ‘rotten’, ( ((H( ( ((H(
(H( (H( < /H( H( H(/ H( ‘dry’. Longer words do not undergo
SRA though they can have a nominal form, e.g. J J J J ‘cold, peaceful’ < J J J J ‘cool off’. If
the form is indeed a prefix, we would expect the reduplication to apply to all such forms.
The prefix interpretation does not explain why it is only the monosyllabic underlying
forms which undergo the process. The attested pattern follows directly from a purely
phonological explanation involving SRA.
Note that the resulting forms bear one of the three level tones in Mono. The tone
which occurs on a given item is unpredictable. This could be interpreted in at least two
ways. First, this could indicate that verbs do have an underlying tone, as suggested by
5
Kamanda considers this an instance of a more general process of reduplication in Mono in which
the first syllable of a nominal is reduplicated indicating intensity, e.g. @=>=( @=>=( @=>=( @=>=( ‘tail’ → @=@=>=( @=@=>=( @=@=>=( @=@=>=( ‘tail
(intensive)’ (p. 285). However, the items at issue do not bear any notion of intensity, and their form can be
explained without any reference to other morphological processes in Mono.
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