Tone, Intonation, and Information Structure in Baule-Kode: A Descriptive Overview

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between tone, intonation, and information structure in Baule-Kode, a variety of Baule spoken in central Côte d’Ivoire. The account draws on twelve groups of illustrative lexical and sentential examples, including four annotated fundamental-frequency (F0) contours, and situates them within research on Baule prosody and tonal phonology. Lexical examples display the labels high, mid, low, mid–high, and mid–low; their representation motivates questions about tonal contrasts and tone-bearing units but does not independently establish five phonological categories. Sentence-level material illustrates the difference between the additive particle na and the negative particle nã, as well as patterns associated with focus and topicalisation. The particle illustrations show labelled values of 226 and 234 Hz, but these single-token annotations cannot isolate prosodic effects from vowel nasalisation and contextual variation. The descriptive comparison points to complementary contributions of tonal, segmental, and morphosyntactic cues to discourse interpretation. Its conclusions are limited to the displayed materials and do not presume speaker-level statistical generalisation or perception-based validation.