form of the verb (H, L, HL). Kabiye also has automatic downstep, where a H following a L is always pronounced on a lower pitch than the preceding H within the same phonological phrase. Numerous tonal processes occur once words are placed in context. The contour HLH always surfaces as HꜜHH ~ HHꜜH (depending on the consonant–vowel structure that it associates to). This is a postlexical process that occurs wherever the context permits, within words and across word boundaries. There is lexical L tone spreading in the verb phrase and the associative noun phrase. Vowel harmony Kabiye has vowel harmony, meaning that the quality of the vowel in an affix is determined by that of the root vowel. There are two kinds: ATR vowel harmony, in which words contain either the −ATR vowels (e.g. ɛ-ñɩmɩ́-yɛ "his key") or the +ATR vowels (e-kalími-yé "his chicken"). The vowel is unspecified for ATR and can occur in either set. Lip rounding vowel harmony, in which some affixes contains either unrounded vowels or rounded vowels . This process is much more limited, occurring in some TAM suffixes (e.g. è-kpéz-íɣ́ "he coughs" / è-ɖóz-ùù "he dreams") and some adjectival prefixes (e.g. kɩ́-kpɛ̀d-ʋ̀ʋ́ "black", kʋ́-hʋ̀lʋ̀m-ʋ́ʋ̀ "white"). Again, the vowel is unspecified for ATR and can occur in either set. A limited number of prefixes undergo both vowel harmony processes, e.g. the first person plural subject pronoun: pà-kpàzá-à "they coughed", pɛ̀-wɛ̀ɛ́tà-à "they whispered", pè-wèlìsàá "they listened", pɔ̀-cɔ́nà-à "they looked", pò-ɖòzà-á "they dreamt". Orthography Kabiye was first written in the 1930s, but it was in the early 1980s that the Comité de Langue Nationale Kabiyè (now the Académie Kabiyè), an organ of the Togolese Ministry of Education, standardized the orthography. Kabiye is written in modified Roman script based on the character inventory of the African reference alphabet. An alternative orthography, devised and promoted by R.P. Adjola Raphaël, is widely used among Catholics; it uses the same letters but with different spelling rules. The following tables show the grapheme-phoneme correspondences in the Standard orthography. Consonants The orthography contains a significant amount of overspecification, since the 5 voiced obstruent graphemes b, g, gb, v, j are superfluous from a strictly phonemic point of view. The grapheme is reserved for loanwords. Vowels Short vowels Long vowels Tones The standard orthography of Kabiye does not generally mark tone. The single exception is the spelling of two subject pronouns that are tonal minimal