By no means marginal: Privative tone in Zhuokeji Rgyalrong

Zhuokeji Rgyalrong has long been identified as 'atonal' or 'marginally tonal'. This paper presents a wealth of evidence from lexical distinctions and from a wide range of morphological constructions, establishing that Zhuokeji is by no means atonal, nor are tonal modifications restricted to a small range of uses. Instead, in addition to being employed to contrast lexical meanings, tones also serve as an essential device in the formation of all sorts of grammatical categories. This paper demonstrates that Zhuokeji Rgyalrong is a tone language that exhibits a privative system in which /HL/ contrasts with /circle divide/. The basic domain of the tonal contrast is the word, and the surface phonological representation of every word is sensitive to the morphological contexts it is situated in. With respect to typology of tone systems, Zhuokeji tone bears both "Asian" and "African" tonal properties.