A prosodic perspective on the assignment of tonal melodies to Arabic loanwords in Bambara

There is a rich descriptive history on Bambara tonology in the published literature (e.g. Bird 1966; Courtenay 1974; Creissels 1978, 1988, 1992; Diarra 1976; Dumestre 1987; Dwyer 1976). Despite the existence of several seminal works on the subject, certain details of the language’s tonal system remain unclear. Scholars have developed deep knowledge about the lexical and grammatical functions of Bambara tone, yet the dependency of tones and tonal processes on prosodic structure has only more recently been explored in detail (Green 2013, 2015; Leben 2002, 2003; Weidman and Rose 2006; Vydrine 2002, 2010). In this paper, we aim to contribute to this ongoing trend by considering a role played by prosodic structure in one particular set of Arabic borrowings for which the assignment of tonal melodies differs from that found in words of non-Arabic origin. We explore possible explanations for this divergence that relate to contemporary scholarship on the properties of Bambara’s prosodic structure. Our point of view on this subject differs from earlier analyses (e.g., Dumestre 1987) in that we propose that prosodic structure plays an important role in the assignment of Bambara tonal melodies. Finally, we relate our findings to a taxonomic model of loanword prosody in Davis et al. (2012) and consider the bearing that our findings may have on the typology of Bambara prosodic structure alongside other Mande languages.