Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2026
In this paper, I propose an updated analysis of the tone system of Paicî, one of the rare tonal Oceanic languages. Building on Jean-Claude Rivierre's (1974) work, I show that the tonal system of Paicî is best described with three underlying primitives: a High tone, a Low tone, and a downstep /↓/ analyzed as a register feature independent of tone. Paicî is particularly interesting for the empirical documentation as well as the typological and theoretical understanding of downstep, because it combines many rare properties: (i) only downstepped ↓L is attested; (ii) downstep is incompatible with H tones within the prosodic word (*↓H, *H…↓L); (iii) it is realized utterance-initially; (iv) it has accentual properties, and very likely derives from a former accentual system. The paper also provides an acoustic description of tone and downstep in Paicî, an important step toward filling a serious gap in the documentation of downstepped ↓L tones and their properties.
I would like to thank Hélène Nimbaye and Anna Gonari for kindly accepting to teach me some Paicî and for their collaboration and patience: olé ba mâinâ! Many thanks to Alexej Gundy, for helping me with the digitization of Jean-Claude Rivierre's (1983) dictionary into a searchable database. For helpful comments and feedback, I also thank Byron Ahn, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Ian Flaws, Steven Foley, Vera Gor, Larry Hyman, Laura Kalin, Will Leben, John Merrill, Nik Rolle, Jasper Talwani, and audiences at the 36th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 11th Conference on Oceanic Linguistics, UC Berkeley Phonology Forum, as well as three anonymous reviewers and the editor, Laura McPherson.