Tonal languages without tone: downstep in Drubea and Numèè (Oceanic, New Caledonia)

In this article, I analyse the word-prosodic system of Drubea and Numèè, two of the rare tonal Oceanic languages. Building on Rivierre’s (1973) seminal work, I show that the word-prosodic system of these two languages can be analysed as involving only register features: an underlying downstep and a postlexical epenthetic upstep. Drubea and Numèè are thus tonal languages without tones stricto sensu. This new type of word-prosodic system has both theoretical and typological implications: (i) register features, defined as in Snider’s (1999) Register Tier Theory, need not be subordinate to or associated with tones, and may exist in the absence of tone, including in underlying representation; (ii) tonal systems come in two types: tone-based systems in which the tonal contrasts are defined paradigmatically, as in most tone languages, and register-based systems where tonal contrasts are defined syntagmatically, as in Drubea and Numèè.