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. High-Mid melody
(C= (C= (C= (C= ‘beauty’ < C= C= ‘be good, be beautiful’
(@= (@= (@= (@= ‘vomiting’ < @= @= @= @= ‘vomit’
(MK (MK (MK (MK ‘breath’ < MK MK ‘breathe’
( ( ( ( C=H=C= C=H=C= C=H=C= C=H=C= ‘bread’ < C=H=C= C=H=C= C=H=C= C=H=C= ‘bake manioc’
K(K K(K K(K K(K ‘semen’
c. High-Fall melody
< K K K K ‘give birth’ (cf. KK KK KK KK ‘death’)
(C=(=C= (C=(=C= (C=(=C= (C=(=C= ‘acidity’ < C= C= C= C= ‘be bitter’
Tisserant (1930: 159) refers to these nominalized verbs as “infinitives”. However,
this does not explain the tonal patterns found in (17b,c) which do not follow the infinitive
High-Low tone melody. 6
In my corpus, both types of derivation are attested for one verb form, as shown in
(19). Note that =(=( =(=( =(=( =(=( ‘journey’ has High tones, whereas the tone on the root of the
nominalized verb (= (= (= (= ‘going’ is Low.
(19) Verb SRA Nominalized verb
(= (= (= (= ‘come, go’ =(=( =(=( =(=( =(=( ‘journey’ (= (= (= (= ‘going’
Finally, I make just brief note of a couple of patterns in Mono morphemes which
may be vestiges of historical morphological processes. First, as mentioned in Section 6.2,
there are a large number of Mono verbs which have the form CV1HV1, for example IKHK
IKHK
‘tear’, H H H H ‘open’, F=H= F=H= ‘choose’, >H >H >H >H ‘do’, and @H @H @H @H ‘suck’. This may be a vestige
of an ancient derivational process in Ubangian. Kamanda (p. 502) notes that Ngbandi and
Ngbaka-Minagende both presently have a -rV derivational suffix. In Mono, there is
semantic similarity between a few verbs of the form CV and those of the form CV1HV1,
e.g. IK IK ‘uproot’ vs. IKHK IKHK IKHK ‘tear’, and A A A A ‘grovel’ vs. AH AH AH AH ‘descend’.
Second, there are a number of animate nouns in Mono which begin with = =, = = e.g.
105
=>KHK =>KHK =>KHK =>KHK ‘goat’, =(H( =(H( =(H( =(H( ‘snake’, =K =K =K =K ‘bird’, =H =H =H =H ‘livestock’, =L(H( =L(H( =L(H( =L(H( ‘dog’, =MAA =MAA =MAA =MAA ‘catfish’,
=5A =5A =5A =5A ‘male’, =5A =5A =5A =5A ‘female’, =C=( =C=( =C=( =C=( ‘friend’, and =M== =M== =M== =M== ‘old woman’. Cloarec-Heiss (p.
6
In the related language Mbandja (Tingbo 1978: 77), infinitives and nominalized verbs are distinct
in form. For example, the infinitive of the root JE JE ‘fall’ is J=(J J=(J J=(J J=(J whereas the nominalized form of the verb is
J J J J .