Tone in Naijá: A prosodic experiment on the realization of copular and imperfective /de/ and its consequences for spelling

Tone has been recognised as a prominent feature in many Atlantic creoles, likely inherited from the Niger-Congo substrate languages. However, the role of tone has been addressed differently in different language. For instance, Saramaccan tones have been traditionally studied since Voorhoeve (1961) and Rountree (1972). Instead, there has been some reluctance among researchers to address Naijá (Nigerian Pidgin), an English-based pidgin-creole spoken in Nigeria, as a tonal language. Some scholars do not mention tone (Agheyisi 1971), while others (e.g. Elubge & Omamor 1991; Elugbe 2004: 838¬–840) claim that the language is better described as a pitch-accent system. Faraclas (1985; 1996: 263) claims that two tones exist in Naijá (Low and High) and they are used to mark both lexical and morphological distinctions.
In this paper, I present experimental evidence concerning tonal assignment on the item DE (/de/), in the elicited speech of three Naijá speakers with different level of sociolinguistic nativization of the language. In Naijá, DE is a complex item used as locative/existential verb, predicate in associative constructions with fo, copula in attributive sentences, imperfective preverbal marker and non-finite marker in complex verb clusters. Most of the speakers testify that pitch level is determinant to distinguish the existential/locative uses from the aspectual/non-finite uses (cf. Faraclas 1996: 263). However, no experimental phonological data has ever been elicited to test hypothesis on Naijá prosody. This paper establishes that tonal distinction on the item DE are categorically produced by speakers of both native and non-native varieties of Nigerian Pidgin in response to written stimuli containing tonally underspecified items.