3. Ganza Tonology
Ganza [gza] is a previously undescribed Omotic language of the Mao subgroup found in the Kurmuk district of Sudan and the south of the Benishangul-Gumuz state of Ethiopia. This paper gives an overview of the tone system of Ganza, representing part of nearly a year of phonological fieldwork on the language. Included are a description of Ganza tonemes, tonal behaviors, and noun and verb tone melodies. Perhaps the most significant feature highlighted in this paper is the existence of "construct melodies", a tonal melody that predictably alternates with the citation melody in both noun and verb roots.

4. Introduction to Ganza
Ganza [gza] Afroasiatic>Omotic>North> Mao>West
Omotic exclusive to Ethiopia.
Omotic‘s position within Afroasiatic is controversial.
Mao is the most "data deficient" (Bender 2000:179, 221) and "undocumented" (Bender 2003:266) of all the sub-families.
Bender: Omotic > (TNDA) Mao >(Hz.-Sz.) (MB-MD) Ganza Hayward: Omotic > (North) (South) Mao > (Begi) (Bambassi & Didessa)
(Figure 1)

5. Introduction to Ganza
Ganza spoken in Sudan and Ethiopia by approximately 5,000 speakers
Sudan: Blue Nile Region (Kurmuk District)
Ethiopia: Benishangul-Gumuz Region
(Mao-Komo Special Woreda)
(Figure 2)

6. Tonemes of Ganza Tone bears a high functional load in Ganza.
Contrastive in noun and verb roots (1)
Contrastive in functional morphemes (2)
Contrastive in demonstratives (3)
Complementary cue in verbal morphology (4)

7. Tonemes of Ganza Tone bears a high functional load in Ganza. (1)
Contrastive in noun and verb roots (1)
Contrastive in functional morphemes (2)
Contrastive in demonstratives (3)
Complementary cue in verbal morphology (4)
(1)
wàŋà
'chicken'
cf.
wáŋà
'ensete'
wát'à
'to insult'
wáꜜt'á
'to distribute'
wàlà
'to remain'
wàlá
'to seem'

8. Tonemes of Ganza Tone bears a high functional load in Ganza.
Contrastive in noun and verb roots (1)
Contrastive in functional morphemes (2)
Contrastive in demonstratives (3)
Complementary cue in verbal morphology (4)

9. Tonemes of Ganza Tone bears a high functional load in Ganza.
Contrastive in noun and verb roots (1)
Contrastive in functional morphemes (2)
Contrastive in demonstratives (3)
Complementary cue in verbal morphology (4)

10. Tonemes of Ganza Tone bears a high functional load in Ganza.
Contrastive in noun and verb roots (1)
Contrastive in functional morphemes (2)
Contrastive in demonstratives (3)
Complementary cue in verbal morphology (4)

11. Tonemes of Ganza
Ganza has three phonemic levels of tone (tonemes): high (H), low (L), and downstepped high (ꜜH) (5).

12. Tonemes of Ganza (ꜜH) is a kind of false or developing mid tone:
It has the properties of a phonemic level of tone: It is contrastive with H and L, occurring lexically. It is not analyzable simply as a floating L in the root melody because the L is never realized on a mora.
It has the properties of simple non-automatic downstep: it is limited in distribution (contrast with H is neutralized before an overt L) and causes downstep of following H tones.

13. Tonemes of Ganza
Contour tones are attested but are analyzed as multiple level tonemes realized on the same syllable.
Lexically they appear on long vowels or diphthongs (6).
Utterance final contours will redistribute as level tones when toneless morphology is affixed (7).
Tones do not redestribute, instead the ꜜH spreads.

14. Tonemes of Ganza
Contour tones are attested but are analyzed as multiple level tonemes realized on the same syllable.
Lexically they appear on long vowels or diphthongs (6).
Utterance final contours will redistribute as level tones when toneless morphology is affixed (7).
(6)
H>L fall
H>ꜜH Fall
L>H Rise
k'jóò
'body'
máꜜá
'to eat'
kʰòó
'to carry'
kʰáà
'labour'
kʰwáꜜá
'to come'
bàá
'father'
béè
'black kite'
níꜜí
'father (of another)'
nìí
'father (of self)'
síì
'wax'
sáꜜá
'woman, wife'
njàú
'cat'
háù
'to go'
kʰíꜜí
'3f'
ʔáù
'to say'
kʰúꜜú
'3pl'
Tones do not redestribute, instead the ꜜH spreads.

15. Tonemes of Ganza
Contour tones are attested but are analyzed as multiple level tonemes realized on the same syllable.
Lexically they appear on long vowels or diphthongs (6).
Utterance final contours will redistribute as level tones when toneless morphology is affixed (7).
(7)
Isolation
Plus /-di/ ‘nominal clause marker’ suffix
/r/
ɡábîr
'sheep'
ɡábírrì
'the/a sheep'
/l/
jàwîl
'hyena'
jàwìllí
'the/a hyena'
/t'/
ʃêt
'buffalo'
ʃétt'ì
'the/a buffalo'
Tones do not redestribute, instead the ꜜH spreads.

16. Tonemes of Ganza (ꜜH) is a kind of false or developing mid tone:
It has the properties of a phonemic level of tone: It is contrastive with H and L, occurring lexically. It is not analyzable simply as a floating L in the root melody because the L is never realized on a mora.
béè 'yellow-billed kite'
Here the tones redistribute accross moras.

17. Tonemes of Ganza (ꜜH) is a kind of false or developing mid tone:
It has the properties of a phonemic level of tone: It is contrastive with H and L, occurring lexically. It is not analyzable simply as a floating L in the root melody because the L is never realized on a mora.
t'éꜜé 'hornbill'
Tones do not redestribute, instead the ꜜH spreads. *

18. Tonemes of Ganza
The approximate pitch difference between H and L on the same register is 30Hz; register shift is approximately 10Hz.
Tones do not redestribute, instead the ꜜH spreads.
(Figure 3)

19. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).

20. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).

21. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).

22. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
Ganza has morphemes that are underlyingly unassociated with tonal melodies as well as tones that are underlyingly unassociated with morphemes. Some nominal suffixes and all clitics are toneless, and some tones appear independent of morphemes.
/-di/ 'nominal clause marker' suffix and /-ɡa/ 'third person singular nominative' clitic' in ).
The indicative mood co-occurs with an utterance final L.

23. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
H tones will spread rightward and unbounded within the phonological word (10).

24. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
Floating H tones will associate rightward, delinking existing L tones or merging with existing H (11).

25. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
Floating L will not associate, causing downstep (12)

26. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
L tone appends as default for toneless morphemes (13).

27. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
All noun and verb roots have two tonal melodies; the melody which is realized depends on the syntactic environment.

28. Basic Tonal Phenomena
"In addition to a citation tone melody, every noun, adjective, and verb in Ganza has an alternative tone melody which it takes in certain grammatical environments, which I will refer to as the construct melody. For nouns and adjectives this alternative melody is applied when the word is modified, whether by another noun, a demonstrative, a possessive pronoun, etc. […] For verbs the construct melody is taken in differing grammatical environments […] This phenomenon was first observed by Michael Ahland in the phonology of Bambassi Mao (2009). The term "construct melody" was first used in his dissertation (Ahland 2012) and was recommended to me by him. A similar phenomenon has also been observed by Anne-Christie Hellenthal in Sheko, a Majoid-Omotic language (2010:123). It will be interesting to see if this feature is also attested in the other Mao languages, Hoozo and Sezo, as this will have significant bearing on the reconstruction of the Proto-Mao tone system." (Smolders, forthcoming)

29. Basic Tonal Phenomena Basic features of the Ganza tone system include:
Automatic (8) & non-automatic downstep (9).
Toneless morphemes & boundary tones (10).
Dominant H behaviour (10) (11) (12) (13).
Construct Melodies (14) (15).
e.g. the noun [ɡaŋa] has a /H/ citation melody and a /L/ construct melody as in (14) and (15).
The melody of a given word (in this case H:L noun) is entirely dependent on the grammatical environment of that word and has zero connection with the phonological environment. Thus you can put any tonal melody adjacent to a word, whether rightward or leftward, floating tones or no, and it will behave predictably as one tonal melody or the other depending on the gramattical environment is correct.
More on this in the next section.

30. Noun Tone Melodies (Figure 4)
Pairings of citation and construct melodies form "Lexical Tone Classes" (LTCs). There are ten attested LTCs for disyllabic nouns.
Disyllabic nouns have eight attested citation melodies: /H/, /Hꜜ/, /HꜜH/, /HL/, /LH/, /LHꜜ/, /L/, and /Lꜛ/.
Disyllabic nouns have three attested construct melodies: /L/, /HL/, and /Hꜜ/.
(Figure 4)

31. Noun Tone Melodies Disyllabic LTC attestations. (Figure 5)
Pairings of citation and construct melodies form "Lexical Tone Classes" (LTCs). There are ten attested LTCs for disyllabic nouns.
Disyllabic nouns have eight attested citation melodies: /H/, /Hꜜ/, /HꜜH/, /HL/, /LH/, /LHꜜ/, /L/, and /Lꜛ/.
Disyllabic nouns have three attested construct melodies: /L/, /HL/, and /Hꜜ/.
(Figure 5)

32. Noun Tone Melodies Monosyllabic LTC attestations. (Figure 6)
Pairings of citation and construct melodies form "Lexical Tone Classes" (LTCs). There are ten attested LTCs for disyllabic nouns.
Disyllabic nouns have eight attested citation melodies: /H/, /Hꜜ/, /HꜜH/, /HL/, /LH/, /LHꜜ/, /L/, and /Lꜛ/.
Disyllabic nouns have three attested construct melodies: /L/, /HL/, and /Hꜜ/.
Notice anything? No overlap! This is excellent evidence that the CVV and CVC nouns were once all CVCV and that tonal melody was a factor as to whether they developed one way or the other.
(Figure 7)

33. Noun Tone Melodies
Noun construct melodies in nouns are triggered by modification.
With multiple nouns embedded in a noun clause the leftmost (head) element will retain the citation melody and all subsequent modified nouns will take the construct melody (16).
The results do not change when elements are rearranged (17) (18).

34. Noun Tone Melodies
Noun construct melodies in nouns are triggered by modification.
With multiple nouns embedded in a noun clause the leftmost (head) element will retain the citation melody and all subsequent lexemes will take the construct melody (16).
The results do not change when elements are rearranged (17) (18).
Embedding modified nouns results in sequences of construct melodies

35. Noun Tone Melodies
Noun construct melodies in nouns are triggered by modification.
With multiple nouns embedded in a noun clause the leftmost (head) element will retain the citation melody and all subsequent lexemes will take the construct melody (16).
The results do not change when elements are rearranged (17) (18).
All these nouns belong to the /HꜜH:HHꜜ/
Embedding modified nouns results in sequences of construct melodies

36. Noun Tone Melodies
Noun construct melodies are only trigged by modification, not simply by any preceding element. The complexity of these processes can be illutrated with complex numeric clauses (19). The fifth and sixth data lines below represent phrasal boundaries and noun LTCs respectively.
Embedding modified nouns results in sequences of construct melodies; this is not simply about adjacency, however, since multiple elements in the same noun clause but not functioning as modifier do not trigger construct melodies.

37. Verb Tone Melodies (Figure 8)
Simplex verbs (i.e. disyllabic, monomorphemic verbs) attest six LTCs (Figure 8 and Figure 9)
Simplex verbs have five attested citation melodies: /H/, /HꜜH/, /HL/, /LH/, and /Lꜛ/
Simplex verbs have four attested construct melodies: /L/, /HL/, /Hꜜ/, /Lꜛ/.
(Figure 8)

38. Verb Tone Melodies (Figure 9)
Simplex verbs (i.e. disyllabic, monomorphemic verbs) attest six LTCs (Figure 8 and Figure 9)
Simplex verbs have five attested citation melodies: /H/, /HꜜH/, /HL/, /LH/, and /Lꜛ/
Simplex verbs have four attested construct melodies: /L/, /HL/, /Hꜜ/, /Lꜛ/.
(Figure 9)

39. Verb Tone Melodies
Verb stems take the citation melody in certain grammatical environments, the construct melody in a different set of environments, and will alternate to agree with the main verb in a third set of environments (Figure 10).
Unlike noun melodies, verb construct melodies are not predictable modification.
In certain grammatical environments the verb stem takes the citation melody, in others it takes the construct melody, and in a select it will agree with the main verb.
(Figure 10)

40. Verb Tone Melodies
More research is needed to determine factor in citation/construct alternation.

41. Verb Tone Melodies
Melodic agreement occurs when the verb root is dependent, such as the continuous auxiliaries, non-final different-subject verbs, and serial verb constructions (21) (22).

42. Conclusion
Ganza tone is particularly complex for what is essentially a two-tone system. In my research I observed three tonemes— high (H), low (L), and a non-automatic downstepped high (ꜜH) which functions like a developing mid— as well as basic tonal phenomena such as automatic downstep, toneless morphemes, boundary tones, , and H dominance in the form of rightward unbounded tonal spread. Most notably, however, I observed the existence of "construct melodies", a phenomenon in which a noun or verb root takes an alternate tonal melody in certain grammatical constructions. Noun and verb roots are categorized into lexical tone classes (LTCs) reflecting the attested pairings of citation and construct melodies. I demonstrated that noun construct melodies are triggered by a modifier. Embedding modified nouns results in sequences of construct melodies; this is not simply about adjacency, however, since multiple elements in the same noun clause but not functioning as modifier do not trigger construct melodies. Verb construct melodies, on the other hand, vary according to the morphosyntactic environment. While these environments can be sufficiently described, further research is required to determine if there is some unifying factor (e.g. TAM) for predicting the verb melody alternation. In those cases where the melody agrees with another verb stem, syntactic dependency is the most plausible factor involved.

43. References
Ahland, Michael B Aspects of Northern Mao (Bambassi-Diddesa) Phonology. Linguistic Discovery 7(1):1-42.
Ahland, Michael B A Grammar of Northern Mao (Màwés Aas'è). Eugene: University of Oregon PhD dissertation.
Bender, M. Lionel Comparative morphology of the Omotic languages. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.
Bender, M. Lionel Omotic lexicon and phonology. (Published by author)
Hayward, Richard J The ‘empty quarter’ of Afroasiatic Linguistics. In Jacqueline Lecarme (ed.), Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II: Selected papers from the Fifth Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Paris, 2000, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hellenthal, Anne-Christie A Grammar of Sheko. Utrecht: Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap (Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics).
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Seventeenth edition. Dallas: SIL International. Online version:
Smolders, Joshua. Forthcoming. A Phonology of Ganza.