The Functional Motivation of the High Tone Syllable in Yorùbá: A Critique

Abstract

Bisang and Sonaiya (1999) call the high tone syllable (the HTS) in Yorùbá language "an operator which actualises or validates the relationship between a predicate and a subject within a state of affairs". This paper shows that this view is faulty because it makes wrong predictions concerning the element in the language.