Intonation of Predicative and Nominative Syntagmas in Swahili

The author continues to explore the intonation of predicative and nominative syntagmas in various world languages. The paper submitted offers a systematic and purposeful approach to describt the predicative and nominative syntagmas in one of the typically agglutinative languages - Swahili - on the basis of experimental phonetic analysis carried out in the PFUR Laboratory and the Laboratory of the Institute of Asian and African studies of the Lomonosov MSU. The author proves that the leading melody parameter in Swahili is the direction of movement of the frequency which is used as a differential feature in opposing the intonation of predicative and nominative syntagmas. A predicative syntagma is characterized by the rise-and-fall and a nominative - by the even fall movement of the frequency. The duration and the intensity play a subordinate role in respect to the melody in the opposition studied.

intonation, predicative syntagma, nominative syntagma, Swahili, agglutinative languages