Chichewa tones


is the main language spoken in south and central Malawi, and to a lesser extent in Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Like most other Bantu languages, it is tonal; that is to say, pitch patterns are an important part of the pronunciation of words. Thus, for example, the word chímanga "maize" can easily be distinguished from chinangwá "cassava" not only by its consonants but also by its pitch pattern.
Tones also play an important grammatical role in Chichewa verbs, helping to distinguish one tense from another. They also play a part in intonation and phrasing and in distinguishing statements from questions.
Most nouns have either one high tone or none, although a few nouns have two tones. Verbs also usually have no more than one tone per morpheme. Chichewa thus in some respects can be considered to be a pitch-accent language with a "mixture of accentual and tonal properties".
Some specialists, notably Larry Hyman, however, have argued that the term "pitch-accent language" is an over-simplification and should be avoided. He considers it best to consider such languages simply as one variety of tonal languages.

Overview

Lexical tones

Nouns

Certain syllables in Chichewa words are associated with high pitch. Usually there is one high pitch per word or morpheme, but some words have no high tone. In nouns the high pitch is usually in one of the last three syllables:
In a few nouns there are two high tones. If these tones are separated by only one unaccented syllable, they usually join in a plateau of three high-toned syllables; that is, HLH becomes HHH:
In addition there are a large number of nouns which have no high tone, but which, even when focussed or emphasised, are pronounced with all the syllables low:
Because there is usually only one high tone per morpheme, it can be considered as a kind of tonal accent. It differs from a stress-accent such as in English in that it always retains the same pitch contour. It is also possible for an accent to contrast with a lack of accent:
Verbal roots too can have a lexical tone, but only on the final vowel -a of the verb. Most verbs, however, are toneless:
The tones are not inherited from proto-Bantu, but appear to be an independent development in Chichewa.
Monosyllabic verbs are always toneless:
Often a verb has a tone not because the root has one but because a stative or intensive suffix is added to it:
One of the main features of the Chichewa verb system is that each tense is associated with one of about eight different tonal patterns; there are different patterns again when the verb is in a relative clause or is negative. Thus the present simple is accented on the initial syllable, the remote perfect on the tense-marker -na-, the present continuous on the syllable following the tense-marker -ku-, the present habitual on the initial and penultimate, the remote imperfect on the tense-marker -ká- and the penultimate, the subjunctive on the final, the perfect is toneless, and so on:
These tonal patterns apply whether the verb is long or short. In some dialects it is common in longer verbs to hear tonal spreading, so that for example the first verb above is heard as ndífótokoza and the second as ndináfótokoza. However, in the present habitual, the first tone does not spread. Tones will also spread, even in shorter verbs, when a verb is followed by an object, except for the subjunctive -é.
Negative verbs have different tonal patterns. For example, the negative infinitive, negative subjunctive, negative "not yet" tense, and negative future all have a single tone on the penultimate syllable. This tone causes all the other tones, such as the tone of the negative-marker sí, to be omitted:
When used in a relative clause, several tenses have a different intonation. Usually there is an extra accent on the first syllable, and often another on the penultimate:
When the verb-root itself has a tone, this can be heard on the final vowel. However, if the tense has a penultimate or final accent, the tone cannot be heard:
Lexical and grammatical tones are not the only tones heard in a Chichewa sentence, but there are intonational tones as well. One common tone is a boundary tone rising from low to high which is heard whenever there is a pause in the sentence, for example after a topic or subordinate clause.
Tones are also added to questions. For example, the toneless word kuti 'where?' becomes kúti in the following question:
Further details of intonational tones are given below.

How tones are pronounced

The accompanying illustration shows the pitch-track of the following sentence:
The first word, anádyétsa 'they fed', has an accent theoretically on the antepenultimate syllable. However, in this example, the peak of the accent does not coincide with the syllable but is delayed, giving the impression that it has spread to two syllables. This process is known as "tone doubling" or "peak delay", and is usual whenever a verb is followed by an object.
The second word, nyaní 'baboon', has an accent on the final syllable, but as usually happens with final accents, it has spread backwards to the penultimate syllable, showing a nearly level or gently rising contour, with only the initial n being low-pitched. Another feature of a final accent is that it tends not to be very high.
If it comes at the end of a sentence a final-tone word such as nyaní can optionally be pronounced as nyăni with a rising tone on the penultimate and the final syllable low. But if a suffix is added, the stress moves to the new penultimate, and the word is pronounced with a full-height tone: nyaní-yo 'that baboon'.
The third word, nsómba 'fish', has penultimate accent. Since the word ends the sentence, the tone falls from high to low.
Another point shown in the voice track is that the first accent is higher than the second. This is normal in declarative sentences and is known as downdrift. But when two tones come together, as in nyaní nsómba, there is no downdrift.
The intensity reading at the top shows that the intensity is greatest on the penultimate syllable of each word.

Number of tones

Two pitch levels, high and low, conventionally written H and L, are usually considered to be sufficient to describe the tones of Chichewa. In Chichewa itself the high tone is called mngóli wókwéza, and the low tone mngóli wótsítsa. Some authors add a mid-height tone but most do not, but consider a mid-height tone to be merely an allophone of nearby high tones.
From a theoretical point of view, however, it has been argued that Chichewa tones are best thought of not in terms of H and L, but in terms of H and Ø, that is to say, high-toned vs toneless syllables. The reason is that H tones are much more dynamic than L tones and play a large role in tonal phenomena, whereas L-toned syllables are relatively inert.
Tones are not marked in the standard orthography used in Chichewa books and newspapers, but linguists usually indicate a high tone by writing it with an acute accent, as in the first syllable of nsómba. The low tones are generally left unmarked.

Works describing Chichewa tones

The earliest work to mark the tones of Chichewa words was the Afro-American scholar Mark Hanna Watkins' A Grammar of Chichewa. This was a pioneering work, since not only was it the first work on Chichewa to include tones, but it was also the first grammar of any African language to be written by an American. The informant used by Watkins was the young Kamuzu Banda, who in 1966 was to become the first President of the Republic of Malawi.
Another grammar including Chichewa tones was a handbook written for Peace Corps Volunteers, Stevick et al., Chinyanja Basic Course, which gives very detailed information on the tones of sentences, and also indicates intonations. Its successor, Scotton and Orr Learning Chichewa, is much less detailed. All three of these works are available on the Internet. J.K. Louw's Chichewa: A Practical Course , which contained tone markings, is currently out of print.
From 1976 onwards a number of academic articles by Malawian and Western scholars have been published on different aspects of Chichewa tones. The most recent work discussing the tones of Chichewa is The Phonology of Chichewa by Laura Downing and Al Mtenje.
Four dictionaries also mark the tones on Chichewa words. The earliest of these was volume 3 of J.K. Louw's Chichewa: A Practical Course ; A Learner's Chichewa-English, English-Chichewa Dictionary by Botne and Kulemeka, the monolingual Mtanthauziramawu wa Chinyanja/Chichewa produced by the Centre for Language Studies of the University of Malawi, and the Common Bantu On-Line Chichewa Dictionary formerly published online by the University of California in Berkeley.
So far all the studies which have been published on Chichewa tones have dealt with the Malawian variety of the language. There is no published information available on the tones of Chinyanja spoken in Zambia and Mozambique.

Some tonal phenomena

In order to understand Chichewa tones, it is necessary first to understand various tonal phenomena that can occur, which are briefly outlined below.

Downdrift

Normally in a Chichewa sentence, whenever tones come in the sequence HLH or HLLH, it is usual for the second high tone to be a little lower than the first one. So for example in the word ndímapíta 'I usually go', the tone of the syllable ndí is pronounced a little higher than the tone of pí. Thus generally speaking the highest tone in a sentence is the first one. This phenomenon, which is common in many Bantu languages, is known as 'downdrift' or 'automatic downstep'.
However, there are several exceptions to this rule. Downdrift does not occur, for example, when a speaker is asking a question, or reciting a list of items with a pause after each one, or sometimes if a word is pronounced on a high pitch for emphasis. There is also no downdrift in words like wápolísi 'policeman', where two high tones in the sequence HLH are bridged to make a plateau HHH.

High tone spreading ('HTS')

In some dialects a high tone may sometimes spread to the following syllable; this is known as 'High Tone Spreading' or 'Tone Doubling'. So where some speakers say ndináthandiza 'I helped', others will say ndináthándiza. Some phoneticians argue that what happens here, in some cases at least, is that the highest part or 'peak' of the tone moves forward, giving the impression that the tone covers two syllables, a process called 'peak delay'. An illustration of peak delay can be seen clearly in the pitch-track of the word anádyetsa 'they fed', here pronounced anádyétsa, in Downing et al..
In order for HTS to occur, there must be at least 3 syllables following the tone, although not necessarily in the same word.
One very frequent use of spreading, at least in some dialects, is to link together two words into a single phrase. In transcriptions one frequently finds phrases such as kuphíká nyama 'to cook meat' or kusámála mkázi 'to care for a wife', chímánga chánga 'my maize' mikángó iyo 'those lions' etc. in which the second tone in each phrase is not original but due to spreading. The contexts where spreading occurs vary from one dialect to another.
There are some verbal forms in which spreading does not occur; for example, the first tone in the present habitual does not spread: ndí-ma-thandíza 'I usually help'. The tone on -ngá- and -má- in negative tenses such as sí-ndí-má-thandiza 'I never help' and si-ndi-ngá-thandíze 'I can't help' also does not spread, although it may form a plateau with a 'bumped' tone: si-ndi-ngá-wá-phé 'I can't kill them'.

Tonal plateau

It sometimes happens that the sequence HLH in Chichewa becomes HHH, making a tonal 'plateau'. A tonal plateau is common after the words á 'of' and ndí 'and':
When a word or closely connected phrase ends in HHL or HLHL, there is a tendency in Chichewa for the second H to move to the final syllable of the word. This process is known as 'tone shifting' or 'bumping'.
Local bumping
In one type of bumping LHHL at the end of a word or phrase becomes LHHH :
At the end of a sentence the final high tone may drop again, reverting the word to anámúpha.
However, in certain verb tenses such as the Present Habitual when the tones are HHL, the penultimate tone is shifted to the final, but there is no plateau. Instead, the two tones are kept separate:
There is no bumping in HHL words where the first syllable is derived from á 'of':
Non-local bumping
In another kind, HLHL at the end of a word or phrase changes to HLLH or, with spreading of the first high tone, HHLH:
Again, the Present Habitual is an exception, and when the tones are HLHL, bumping does not occur:
Reverse bumping
A related phenomenon, but in reverse, is found when the addition of the suffix -tú 'really' causes a normally word-final tone to move back one syllable, so that LHH at the end of a word becomes HLH:
Certain suffixes, known as enclitics, add a high tone to the last syllable of the word to which they are joined. When added to a toneless word or a word ending in LL, this high tone can easily be heard. Bumping does not occur when the tones are HLHL:
But when an enclitic is combined with word which has penultimate high tone, there is local bumping, and the result is a triple tone:
When added to a word with final high tone, it raises the tone higher :
Not all suffixes are tonally enclitic in this way. For example, when added to nouns, locative suffixes do not add a tone, e.g.:
However, when added to verbs, the same suffixes add an enclitic tone:

Proclitic tenses

Conversely, certain prefixes transfer their high tone to the syllable which follows them. Prefixes of this kind are called 'proclitic' or 'post-accenting'. The following tenses have a proclitic prefix:
The infinitive:
The Present Continuous, Recent Past, Recent Past Imperfective, and Immediate Imperative:
The Present and Perfect participial tenses:
Verbal Adjective with -ó- :
Any tense with the infix -ngo- 'just'. But other prefixes used with -ngo- are no longer proclitic; instead, the accent goes on the prefix itself:
Object-markers such as ndí- 'me', mú- 'him/her' etc. also become proclitic when added to an imperative or subjunctive:
However, the aspect-marker -ka- 'go and' is not proclitic. With an imperative it is toneless, and with a subjunctive it puts tones on itself and the penultimate:
When, as often happens, an aspect-marker or object-marker is added to a proclitic tense, extra tones appear on the verb stem, either on the penultimate or on the final:
Further details are given below.

Meeussen's Rule

is a process in several Bantu languages whereby a sequence HH becomes HL. This is frequent in verbs. An example in Chichewa is the infinitive kú- + goná 'to sleep', where the addition of the proclitic kú- would normally be expected to produce ku-góná with two high tones; but by Meeussen's Rule the second tone is dropped, leaving ku-góna with a high tone on the penultimate only. In the Southern Region, a-ná-mú-thandiza 'he helped him' is pronounced a-ná-mu-thandiza, presumably also by Meeussen's Rule.
Meeussen's Rule does not apply in every circumstance. For example, a tone derived from spreading is unaffected by it, e.g. ku-góná bwino 'to sleep well', where the tone of the verb-stem goná, having been deleted by Meeussen's Rule to make ku-góna 'to sleep', is replaced by spreading when the word is used in a phrase.
Another instance where Meeussen's Rule does not apply in Chichewa is when the aspect-marker -ká- 'go and' is added to a verb, for example: a-ná-ká-thandiza 'he went and helped'. So far from being deleted, this tone in some circumstances can itself spread to the next syllable, e.g. a-ná-ká-thándiza. The tone of an object-marker such as -mu- 'him' in the same position, however, is deleted by Meeussen's Rule and then replaced by spreading; it does not itself spread: a-ná-mú-thandiza 'he helped him'.

Tone of consonants

Just as in English, where in a word like zoo or wood or now the initial voiced consonant has a low pitch compared with the following vowel, the same is true of Chichewa. Thus Trithart marks the tones of initial consonants such as , , , and in some words as Low.
However, an initial nasal consonant is not always pronounced with a low pitch. After a high tone it can acquire a high tone itself, e.g. wá ḿsodzi 'of the fisherman' The consonants n and m can also have a high tone when contracted from ndí 'and' or high-toned -mú-, e.g. ḿmakhálá kuti? 'where do you live?'.
In some Southern African Bantu languages such as Zulu a voiced consonant at the beginning of a syllable not only has a low pitch itself, but can also lower the pitch of all or part of the following vowel. Such consonants are known as 'depressor consonants'. The question of whether Chichewa has depressor consonants was first considered by Trithart and further by Cibelli. According to data collected by Cibelli, a voiced or nasalised consonant does indeed have a small effect on the tone of a following vowel, making it a semitone or more lower; so that for example the second vowel of ku-gúla 'to buy' would have a slightly lower pitch than that of ku-kúla 'to grow' or ku-khála 'to sit'. When the vowel is toneless, the effect is less, but it seems that there is still a slight difference. The effect of depressor consonants in Chichewa, however, is much less noticeable than in Zulu.

Lexical tones

Lexical tones are the tones of individual words - or the lack of tones, since quite a large number of words in Chichewa are toneless and pronounced with all their syllables on a low pitch.

Nouns

In the CBOLD Chichewa dictionary, about 36% of Chichewa nouns are toneless, 57% have one tone, and only 7% have more than one tone. When there is one tone, it is generally on one of the last three syllables. Nouns with a tone more than three syllables from the end are virtually all foreign borrowings, such as sékondale 'secondary school'.
Comparison with other Bantu languages shows that for the most part the tones of nouns in Chichewa correspond to the tones of their cognates in other Bantu languages, and are therefore likely to be inherited from an earlier stage of Bantu. An exception is that nouns which at an earlier period had HH have changed in Chichewa to HL by Meeussen's rule. Two-syllable nouns in Chichewa can therefore have the tones HL, LH, or LL, these three being about equally common, but there are no nouns with the underlying tones HH.
The class-prefix of nouns, such as chi- in chikóndi 'love', or m- in mténgo 'tree', is usually toneless. However, there are some exceptions such as chímanga 'maize'. The three nouns díso 'eye', dzíno 'tooth', and líwu 'sound or word' are irregular in that the high tone moves from the prefix to the stem in the plural, making masó, manó, and mawú respectively.

Toneless nouns

As noted above, in isolation these words are actually pronounced bwālō, Chichēwā, etc., ending with two tones of mid height. Alternatively, in some dialects, they may be pronounced bwălò, Chichĕwà, with a rising tone on the penultimate and a low tone on the final.
This group is less common than the first three. Many of the words with this tone are loanwords from Portuguese or English such as:
A small number of words have more than one tone. Some are compounded with á 'of', which has a high tone, so that wá + ntchíto 'man of work' becomes wántchíto 'worker' with two tones joined in a plateau. In words with the sequence HLH like wá-pólísi 'policeman' the high tones usually bridge to make HHH. Verbal forms such as Lólémba 'Monday' are also originally plateaux. Plateaux are marked with underlining:
The prefix chi- in some words adds two high tones, one following chi- and one on the final. The first may spread forwards and the second backwards, but the two tones are kept separate with the second lower than the first:
If there are only three syllables following the prefix chi-, the two tones link into an HHH plateau:
The HHH pattern is also found in a few other words :
A triple tone is also found in:
In the following compound nouns, however, the high tone of the second element is lost:
The following nouns have two separate tones and no plateau. The second tone is lower than the first:
Adjectives in Chichewa are usually formed with word á 'of', which has a high tone. The high tone tends to spread to the following word. When there is a sequence of HLH, the tones will bridge to make HHH:
Combined with an infinitive, á and ku- usually merge into a high-toned ó-:
Some people make a slight dip between the two tones:
Possessive adjectives are also made with á-. As explained in the section on bumping, their tone may change when they follow a noun ending in HL, LH or HH. The concords shown below are for noun classes 1 and 2:
The adjective wína 'another, a certain' has similar tones to wánga 'my':
The adjective wamba 'ordinary', however, is not made with á and has a low tone on both syllables. The first syllable wa in this word does not change with the class of noun.

Pronominal adjectives

The following three adjectives have their own concords and are not formed using á. Here they are shown with the concords of classes 1 and 2:
As with possessives, the high tone of these may shift by bumping after a noun ending in HL or LH or HH.
With these three the high tone also shifts before a demonstrative suffix: yemwé-yo 'that same one', zonsé-zi 'all these'. The tone also shifts in the word álí-yensé 'each, each and every', in which áli has the tones of a relative-clause verb.
The following demonstrative adjectives usually have a low tone:
The first of these, however, can be pronounced úyo! with a high tone if referring to someone a long way away. The word uti/ati? can also acquire an intonational tone in certain types of questions.

Numbers

Chichewa has the numbers 1 to 5 and 10. These all have penultimate high tone except for -sanu 'five', which is toneless. The adjectives meaning 'how many?' and 'several' also take the number concords and can be considered part of this group. They are here illustrated with the concords for noun classes 1 and 2 :
The numbers zaná '100' and chikwí '1000' exist but are rarely used. It is possible to make other numbers using circumlocutions but these are not often heard, the usual practice being to use English numbers instead.

Personal pronouns

The first and second person pronouns are toneless, but the third person pronouns have a high tone:
These combine with ndi as follows:
The following monosyllabic words are commonly used. The following are toneless:
The following have a high tone:
These words are joined rhythmically to the following word. The high tone can spread to the first syllable of the following word, provided it has at least three syllables: They can also make a plateau with the following word, if the tones are HLH:
The word has a tone when it means 'of' following a noun of class 16:
It also has a tone in certain idiomatic expressions such as pá-yekha or pá-yékha 'on his own'.

Ideophones

The tones of ideophones have also been investigated by linguists. Examples are: bálálábálálá 'scattering in all directions', lólolo 'lots and lots', bii! 'very dark or dirty'. It can be seen that the tonal patterns of ideophones do not necessarily conform to the patterns of other words in the language.

Lexical tones of verbs

Chichewa verbs are mostly toneless in their basic form, although a few have a high tone. However, unlike the situation with the lexical tones of nouns, there is no correlation at all between the high-toned verbs in Chichewa and the high-toned verbs in other Bantu languages. The obvious conclusion is that the high tones of verbs are not inherited from an earlier stage of Bantu but have developed independently in Chichewa.
When a verbal extension is added to a high-toned root, the resulting verb is also usually high-toned, e.g.
Certain extensions, especially those which change a verb from transitive to intransitive, or which make it intensive, also add a tone. According to Kanerva and Mchombo, the passive ending -idwa/-edwa also adds a high tone, but this appears to be true only of the Nkhotakota dialect which they describe.
High-toned verb roots are comparatively rare, though the proportion rises when verbs with stative and intensive extensions are added. In addition there are a number of verbs, such as peza/pezá 'find' which can be pronounced either way. In the monolingual dictionary Mtanthauziramawu wa Chinyanja 2683 verbs are given, with 10% marked as high-toned, and 4% as having either tone. In the Southern Region of Malawi, some speakers do not pronounce the tones of high-toned verbs at all or only sporadically.
The difference between high and low-toned verbs is neutralised when they are used in a verb tense which has a high tone on the penultimate or on the final syllable.
Three irregular verbs, -téro 'do so', -tére 'do like this', and -táni? 'do what?', have a tone on the penultimate syllable.
The view held in Mtenje that Chichewa also has 'rising-tone' verbs has been dropped in his more recent work.
Low-toned verbs
Monosyllabic verbs such as the following are always low-toned, although nouns derived from them, such as imfá 'death', can have a tone:
High-toned verbs
Verbs with either tone
Stative verbs
Most intransitive verbs with the endings -iká, -eká, -uká, -oká derived from simpler verb-stems are high-toned. This is especially true when a transitive verb has been turned by a suffix into an intransitive one:
However, there are some common exceptions such as the following which are low-toned:
Intensive verbs
Intensive verbs with the endings -itsá and -etsá always have a high tone on the final syllable, even when derived from low-toned verbs. A few intensive verbs with the endings -irirá or -ererá are also high-toned:

Tonal melodies of positive tenses

In addition to the lexical tones which go with individual words, Chichewa also has grammatical tones which apply to verbs. Each different tense has its own tonal pattern or melody, which is superimposed on top of whatever lexical tone the verb-stem itself may have.
There are at least eight different tonal patterns in ordinary positive tenses, while others are used in negative tenses or relative clause tenses.
Sometimes two tenses have the same tense-marker and are distinguished by tone alone, as with the Present Habitual and the Past Imperfective. The Present Habitual has two tones, one on the subject-marker and the other on the penultimate, while the Past Imperfective has a tone following the tense-marker:
In the examples, hyphens have been added for clarity; they are not used in the standard orthography.

Toneless

Some tenses, such as the Perfect, are toneless. In toneless tenses all the syllables are pronounced low, unless the verb-stem itself has a high tone :
Other toneless tenses are the simple Imperative, the Potential , and the -ka- tense meaning 'when' or 'if'.

Final tone

One tense, the Subjunctive, has a high tone on the final vowel:
The Infinitive, Present Progressive, Recent Past, and Past Imperfective all have a proclitic tone, that is, a high tone is heard on the syllable immediately following the tense-marker:
If the verb is monosyllabic, the tone often spreads backwards or regresses to the penultimate:
In the Past Simple/Remote Perfect, whether made with -na- or -da-, the tone comes on the tense-marker itself. This tone can also spread to the next syllable in longer verbs in some dialects:
Another tense with tense-marker tone is the perfect conditional:
The Present Simple, which often refers to events in the near future, has a high tone on the initial syllable, that is, on the subject-marker ndi- 'I'. In some dialects this high tone will spread to the second syllable in longer verbs :
In some dialects the two future tenses with -dzá- and -ká- have a tone on both the subject prefix and the tense-marker:
However, in other dialects the first tone is dropped, and only the tense-marker has a tone:
The Present Habitual has a high tone on the initial syllable and another on the penultimate. But if the verb-stem is monosyllabic, the second tone is heard on the final syllable instead of the penultimate. Because of downdrift, the second high tone is slightly lower in pitch than the first.
When the verb is monosyllabic, the second tone is on the final, unless there is an object-marker:
In this tense the first tone never spreads to -ma-.
The Future Continuous also has this tonal pattern:
The Remote Past is similar, but the first tone usually spreads to the second syllable:

Tense-marker and penultimate

The Remote Past Imperfective also has two tones, but on the tense-marker and the penultimate. The second tone disappears if the verb is monosyllabic. The tone on -ká- never spreads:
The same pattern is found in the Necessitative. In some dialects this tense is formed with -dzi- instead of -zi-:
As noted above, some verb stems have an inherent lexical tone, for example goná 'lie down', siyá 'leave ', yang'anitsitsá 'examine carefully'. When such a verb is used to make a tense, the tone can usually be heard on the final syllable. The tone can be heard most easily when the tense-melody is toneless, as in the Perfect tense:
However, it can also be heard when there is another high tone in the verb, provided this tone is not in one of the last two syllables:
If the tense-pattern puts a tone on the antepenultimate syllable, the two tones will link up, making a plateau:
However, if the tonal pattern of the tense puts a tone on the penultimate or the final syllable, the tone of the verb-stem cannot be heard; in the first case because it is deleted by Meeussen's Rule, and in the second, because the two tones coincide:
Certain modifications of the tones of a tense take place when the verb-stem is a short one, i.e. of only one syllable, such as -dya 'eat', or two syllables, such as ona 'see'.
In most tenses, a penultimate tone moves to the final if the verb is monosyllabic. But if there is an aspect-marker or object-marker, the penultimate tone goes on that:
In the 'not yet' tense with -na-, however, the penultimate tone remains penultimate:
It also remains penultimate in the negative future with -dza- or -ka-:
When the shortening of a verb would mean that the verb ends LHH, the second tone disappears:
When a verb has two syllables, in most cases, if the ending would normally be HHL, the second tone shifts to the final, usually making a tonal plateau:
However, when a monosyllabic verb is preceded by -ná-ká- 'went and', this bumping does not occur:
Negative tenses in Chichewa tend to have a different tonal pattern from the corresponding positive ones.
In general, negative intonations can be divided into two groups:
Consequently in some tenses, there are two negative intonations with different meanings. For example, the Remote Perfect has a tone on sí- and the penultimate when it means "didn't", but a single tone on the penultimate when it means "have not yet":
The negative Present Simple / Near Future also has two intonations, depending on whether the meaning is present or future:
The negative tonal melodies are as follows:

only

The Present Simple, in its habitual, non-future sense, has a tone on the initial syllables only. This second tone does not spread even in longer verbs and is presumably itself due to spreading:
However, if an object-marker is added, there is an extra tone on the penultimate syllable:
In monosyllabic verbs, in the Central Region, the tone on the subject-marker disappears in the Present Simple and the tones are:
The negative Remote Perfect tense with -na- or -da- has tones on the negative prefix sí- and the penultimate. The first tone may spread. The ending changes to -e:
In a monosyllabic verb, the second tone goes on the final, unless there is an object-marker:
The negative perfect participial tense has tones very similar to the above, with the first tone on the initial syllable and the second on the penultimate. The first tone may spread:
The Remote Past Imperfective has three tones when negative. The first may spread. The n of nká is syllabic and low-toned, so there is no plateau between the first and second tone:
In a monosyllabic verb, the third tone is lost:
Tenses with proclitic tense-markers, such as the Present Continuous, have a tone on sí and a second tone immediately following the tense-marker:
If the aspect-marker -ma- is added to any negative tense, it carries a high tone; otherwise the tones are similar to the same tenses without -ma-:
When an object-marker is added there is an additional tone on the penultimate:
The negative Perfect Conditional can also optionally have this intonation:
Any negative tense with future meaning, or with the meaning 'not yet', has only one tone, on the penultimate syllable. Other tones, such as those of the negative prefix sí- and the object-marker, are suppressed:
The same intonation, with a tone on the penultimate, is found in non-finite tenses such as the negative Infinitive and negative Subjunctive, which have the negative-marker -sa- following the subject-marker:
When these patterns are used with a monosyllabic verb such as -dya 'eat', the tone usually goes on the final syllable:
However, in the forms with -dza- and -na- the tone goes on the penultimate:
It also goes on the penultimate if a monosyllabic verb is preceded by an object-marker:
The negative Future Continuous and negative Potential have tones on tense-marker and penultimate. The tone on the tense-marker does not spread:
In a monosyllabic verb, the two tones coincide:
The negative infinitive with the aspect-marker -ma- has the same tones:
In a monosyllabic verb, the second tone is lost by Meeussen's Rule:

Introduction

Certain tenses have a different tonal pattern when used in certain kinds of dependent clauses. Stevick calls this intonation the 'relative mood' of the verb, since it is frequently used in relative clauses; however, it is also used in a range of other dependent clauses, such as conditional clauses, cleft sentences, and adverbial clauses of time, place, manner, and concession. Often the use of relative clause intonation alone can show that a verb is being used in the meaning of a relative or conditional clause.

How it is made

The dependent-clause intonation generally has two high tones, one on the initial syllable and another on the penultimate. High tones between these two are suppressed. The first high tone may spread. When the tones are HLHL, some dialects have bumping; for example, ndí-na-gúla ' I bought' can become ndí-ná-gulá.
The relative clause intonation is used most often in relative clauses, for example after améne or yemwé 'who'. The tone of améne spreads to make a plateau with the high tone of the relative clause verb:
'where are the oranges which you bought?'
'he will find the dog which he lost'
The relative clause intonation is also used in temporal clauses after paméne 'when' and in clauses of manner after momwé 'in the way in which', which are derived from the same roots:
'he was getting dressed when I entered'
'as he used to do'
It is also used if the word améne or paméne is omitted, the relative clause intonation alone showing that the verb is being used in a relative way:
'he was very sick when he was a child'
'when rain is falling'
'the month which has finished, i.e. last month'
Questions with ndaní? 'who?' and nchiyáni? 'what?' are expressed as cleft sentences, using relative clause intonation:
'who is sitting on the chair?'
'what's happened?'
The dependent clause intonation is also used in conditional clauses, except those with the toneless -ka- tense. An example can be observed in the following proverb, where the dependent verb has a different intonation from the main verb:
'If I'd known, I'd have cooked some vegetables!'
It is similarly used after ngati 'if' and in clauses after ngakhále 'although':
'it isn't known if she has died'
'even when rain is falling'
However, when ngati means 'as if', the ordinary intonation is used.

Tones of ('am', 'are', 'is')

As well as the word ndi 'is/are' used for identity Chichewa has another verb -li 'am, are, is' used for position or temporary state. The tones of this are irregular in that in the Present Simple, there is no tone on the subject-marker. For the Remote Past, both á-naa-lí and a-ná-li can be heard, apparently without difference of meaning. In the dependent Applied Present, used in clauses of manner, the two tones make a plateau.
In main clauses:
In dependent clauses:
The dependent-clause form of the Persistive tense is frequently heard in the phrase pá-kada-lí pano 'at the present time'.

Aspect-markers

After the tense-marker, there can be one or more aspect-markers, which add precision to the meaning of the tense. Altogether there are four aspect-markers, -má- 'ever, usually, always', -ká- 'go and', -dzá- 'in future', and -ngo- 'just', which are always added in that order, though not usually all at once. These infixes add extra high tones to the verb.

The aspect-marker -má- 'always, ever, generally' usually adds two high tones, one on -má- itself and one on the penultimate syllable. For example, when added to the 'when' tense, which has the toneless tense-marker -ka-, it adds two tones:
However, in the Present Habitual, the tone on -má- is lost:
On the other hand, in the negative Present Habitual, the tone on -má- is retained while the penultimate tone is lost, unless there is an object-marker:
-má- can also be used as a tense-marker itself to make the Imperfect tense, in which case its high tone is proclitic:
The aspect-markers -ká- 'go to' and -dzá- 'in future' or 'come to' have the same tones as each other. In the Remote Perfect, the tone is high, and in longer verbs sometimes spreads:
In a monosyllabic verb in this tense, unlike with the object-marker, the tone of -ká- does not bump to the final:
Contrast:
In tenses which have a tone on the penultimate, -ká- and -dzá- usually lose their tone:
But in monosyllabic verbs, where -ká- comes in penultimate position, it receives the tone:
The high tone is also lost in the Imperative, where there is a tone on the final syllable only:
But in the positive Subjunctive -ká- and -dzá- retain their tone, and there is a second tone on the penultimate. In two-syllable verbs this second tone is bumped to the final. In monosyllabic verbs it is dropped:
The aspect-marker -ngo- 'just' is derived from the infinitive, and like the infinitive it is proclitic, that is to say, there is a high tone on the syllable after -ngo-.
In toneless tenses, the syllables before it are toneless:
In all other tenses, there is a high tone on the syllable preceding -ngo-:
If -ngo- is added after a proclitic tense-marker such as the Present Continuous -ku-, the tense-marker has a high tone and is not proclitic:
Between the aspect-markers and the verb stem, it is possible to add an object-marker such as -mú- 'him/her/it' or -zí- 'those things' etc. In some tenses, the object-marker retains its tone, but in some the tone is lost. In others, the object-marker adds a tone, but not on itself.

With toneless tenses

When an object-marker is added to a toneless tense, such as the Perfect, it has a high tone.
In tenses which have penultimate tone the object-marker is usually toneless:
But when the verb is monosyllabic, the penultimate tone goes on the object-marker itself:
In the Remote Perfect tense, which has the tense-marker -ná- or -dá-, the tone of the object-marker is lost in southern dialects. In dialects with high tone spreading, the object-marker has a high tone, but it is thought that this tone is due to spreading from the previous syllable, as it does not spread further to the following syllable, unlike the tone of -ká-:
Contrast:
With monosyllabic verb-stems, however, the high tone of the object-marker is retained and undergoes bumping, making a plateau:
Contrast:
Where the tense-marker or aspect-marker has proclitic tone, for example in the infinitive, Present Continuous, or Recent Past, there is an additional tone on the penultimate in longer verbs, or on the final in verbs of 2 or 3 syllables. This second tone disappears if the verb has only one syllable:
This is similar to the effect of adding the aspect-marker -má-, except that in three-syllable verbs with -má- the second tone is heard on the penultimate:
In the Subjunctive and Imperative the high tone of the object-marker becomes proclitic and is heard on the syllable which follows it. The final vowel changes to -e and has a tone. There is a plateau if the verb stem has three syllables:
If the verb has two syllables, the tone on the final is dropped by Meeussen's rule:
If the verb is monosyllabic, the tone remains on -mú-, and the high tone of the final vowel is dropped:
When the Imperative is preceded by the aspect-markers ta- or i-ngo-, which are proclitic, the rules for proclitic verbs given above apply:
When -ka- or -dza- are added to an Imperative, they are toneless, and the tone of the object-marker remains proclitic:
But when -ká- or -dzá- is added to the Subjunctive, there are tones on -ká- and the penultimate, and the object-marker loses its tone:
The reflexive-marker -dzí- in most dialects has exactly the same tones as object-markers such as -mú-, but for some speakers in parts of the Central Region there is also an extra tone on the penultimate or final syllable.
In addition to the ordinary lexical tones which go with individual words, and the grammatical tones of verb tenses, other tones can be heard which show phrasing or indicate a question.

Boundary tones

Quite often, if there is a pause in the middle of sentence, such as might be indicated by a comma in writing, the speaker's voice will rise on the syllable just before the pause. This rising tone is called a boundary tone. A boundary tone is typically used after the topic of a sentence, at the end of a dependent clause, after items on a list, and so on. The illustration included here of the sentence Mwamúna, ámulamúlá amáyi clearly shows the rise in the voice on the last syllable of the word mwamúna, which is here taken to be the topic of the sentence.
A typical sentence where the dependent clause precedes the main clause is the following:
As Kanerva points out, the rising boundary tone is not used when the order is reversed and the dependent clause follows the main clause.
Another kind of tone considered to be a boundary tone, but this time a low one, is the optional fall in the speaker's voice at the end of sentences which causes the final high tone on words like chákúdyá 'food' to drop to become chákúdya. The end-of-sentence boundary tone is marked L% in Myers' illustration.
Both Kanerva and Stevick also mention a 'level' boundary tone, which occurs mid-sentence, but without any rise in pitch.

Tones of questions

Wh-Questions

Questions in Chichewa often add high tones where an ordinary statement has no tone. For example, with the word kuti? 'where?', liti 'when?', yani 'who?' or chiyáni 'what?' some people add a tone on the last syllable of the preceding word. This tone does not spread backwards, although it may form a plateau with an antepenultimate tone, as in the 3rd and 4th examples below:
But as Stevick points out, not all speakers do this, and others may say mu-ná-fika liti?
When kuti? 'which place?' or liti? 'which day?' are preceded by ndi 'is', they take a high tone on the first syllable:
It appears that with some speakers the high tone after ndi is heard on the final syllable in forms of this adjective which begin with a vowel; but with other speakers it is heard on the first syllable:
A high tone also goes on the final syllable in ndaní? ' who?' Before this word and nchiyáni? ' what?', since such questions are phrased as a cleft sentence or relative clause, the verb has its relative-clause intonation:
The relative-clause intonation of the verb is also used when a question begins with bwánji? 'how come?', but not when it ends with bwánji?, when it has the meaning 'how?'

Yes-no questions

With yes-no questions, intonations vary. The simplest tone is a rising boundary tone on the final syllable:
A more insistent question often has a HL falling boundary tone on the last syllable. Pitch transcriptions show that the voice rises up on the penultimate and falls on the final:
But in other dialects, it seems that this fall may begin on the penultimate syllable:
If there is already a penultimate high tone it may simply be raised higher:
Alternatively, there can be two successive falling tones, one on the penultimate, and another on the final.
Sometimes, however, there is no particular intonational tone and the question has the same intonation as a statement, especially if the question starts with the question-asking word kodí.
When there is a choice between two things in a disjunctive question, the first half of the question ends in a high boundary tone, but the voice drops in the second half:
Some speakers add intonational tones also with the toneless word kale 'already', making not only the final syllable of kale itself high but also the last syllable of the verb which precedes it:
Other speakers do not add these intonational tones, but pronounce ndavina kale with Low tones.
Occasionally a verb which is otherwise low-toned will acquire a high tone in certain idiomatic usages, e.g. ndapitá 'I'm off', from the normally toneless pita 'go'. This can perhaps also be considered a kind of intonational tone.

Focus and emphasis

In European languages it is common for a word which is picked out for contrast to be pronounced on a higher pitch than the other words in a sentence, e.g. in the sentence, it is likely that the speaker will draw attention to the word baboon by pronouncing it on a high pitch, while the word fish, which has been mentioned already, will be on a low pitch. This kind of emphasis is known as 'focus'. In tonal languages it appears that this raising or lowering of the pitch to indicate focus is either absent or much less noticeable.
A number of studies have examined how focus is expressed in Chichewa and whether it causes a rise in pitch. One finding was that for most speakers, focus has no effect on pitch. For some speakers, however, it appears that there is a slight rise in pitch if a word with a tone is focussed. A toneless word, when in focus, does not appear to rise in pitch.
A different kind of emphasis is emphasis of degree. To show that something is very small, or very large, or very distant, a Chichewa-speaker will often raise the pitch of his or her voice considerably, breaking the sequence of downdrift. For example, a word such as kwámbíri 'very much' or pang'óno 'a little' is sometimes pronounced with a high pitch. The toneless demonstrative uyo 'that man' can also acquire a tone and become úyo! with a high pitch to mean 'that man over there in the distance'.

Tonal minimal pairs

Sometimes two nouns are distinguished by their tone patterns alone, e.g.
Verbs can also sometimes be distinguished by tone alone:
There is also a distinction between:
However, minimal pairs of this kind which differ in lexical tone are not particularly common.
More significant are minimal pairs in verbs, where a change of tones indicates a change in the tense, or a difference between the same tense used in a main clause and in a subordinate clause, for example:
are those in which an element is repeated, such as chipolopolo 'bullet'. The tones of these have been extensively studied in the literature.

Reduplication in nouns

In nouns, the two elements join as follows.
LL + LL becomes LLLL :
LH + LH becomes LHLL :
HL + HL becomes HLLH, by 'bumping':
When adverbs are reduplicated, however, and there is an element of emphasis, the first two types have an additional tone. Thus:
LL + LL becomes LLHL :
LH + LH is also different when emphatic, becoming LHHH :
When a three-syllable element is repeated, there is no special change:
A high tone following a proclitic tense-marker does not repeat when the verb is reduplicated:
However, a final or penultimate tone will usually repeat :
s have slightly different types of reduplication. Moto mentions the following types:
All high:
All low:
High on the first syllable only: