1 Boundary-triggered tone spreading in the prosodic word domain: New insight into compacité tonale in Bambara Christopher R. Green (greencr@umd.edu) University of Maryland - Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) 3rd Colloque Mandé, Paris September 14-17, 2011 1. Compacité Tonale (CT) is widely described in the Mande literature and known as tonal compactness or the noun-compounding rule. a. Active in Bambara and its close relatives (Courtenay 1974; Creissels 1978, 1988a, 1992; Creissels & Grégoire 1993; Dumestre 1987) b. Well-known melodic outcome in a variety of constructions, but a formal mechanism motivating its application has been overlooked c. Generally speaking, tonal melodies of compounds and other derivatives are neutralized to one of two possibilities, except in notable instances. 2. This paper draws upon earlier works and proposes that characteristics of CT are best described in reference to prosodic structure above the syllable, namely the prosodic word domain. a. A tone associated with the prosodic head of a construction has privileged status and can spread when triggered by the presence of an adjacent morpheme. b. The tone of the prosodic word head spreads only within its domain until it encounters the domain boundary. Remaining tone bearing units (i.e. vowels) are assigned a default H tone. c. Boundary-triggered spreading predicts where CT will be observed and also instances where the process cannot occur. 3. There are two possible outcomes of CT: a. H-tone CT s + wl]  swl] ‘lizard skin’ lit. lizard + skin b. L-tone CT jr + wl]  jrwl] ‘lion skin’ lit. lion + skin c. CT has few restrictions related to the length of input words. [jkm] + wl]  jkmwl] ‘cat skin’ lit. cat + skin 4. Not all constructions subject to CT a. d + l]  dl] , *dl] ‘to stop’ lit. edge + to cease/put/place 5. In later stages of word formation, these non-compact words can participate in CT. a. dl] + -l]  dll] ‘incessant’ lit. to stop + without 6. Creissels (1988a) discusses importance of branching morphosyntactic structure in predicting CT patterns for some constructions. Current paper offers that prosodic structure and morphosyntax work in tandem to yield attested CT, also explain when CT fails to occur. 7. Bambara prosodic structure has been the focus of several recent works (e.g. Green 2010, 2011; Leben 2002, 2003; Weidman & Rose 2006) a. Green (2010) focuses on role of segmental prosodic feet in the outcomes of Vowel Syncope and Velar Consonant Deletion in Colloquial Bambara. b. Leben (2002, 2003) and Weidman & Rose (2006) focus on tonal prosodic feet in the assignment of tonal melodies c. Following Green (2011), we assume that segmental and tonal prosodic feet are uniform, left-headed, and maximally disyllabic structures. d. Outcomes of CT illustrate that prosodic word is also left-headed and that its domain defines the bounds of tonal spreading