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The Phonetics And Phonology Of Bora Tone, Amy Roe

Theses and Dissertations

Bora is a Witotoan language spoken in Peru and Colombia. It has an unusual mixed tone/stress system in which L is the specified tone and H the unspecified tone. In this thesis, I describe the underlying tone patterns of noun and verb roots and show how their surface representations change in different phonological environments. I examine noun stems with seven different suffixes and one prefix and verb stems with thirteen different suffixes.

Disyllabic noun roots have three surface tone patterns: L∅, ∅L, and ∅∅. Additionally, Bora has a low boundary tone that associates to the right edge of noun phrases. …