of a tone system could be found in the Nubian languages. He based this conclusion not only on his own data, but also on the observation that Old Nubian had been written without tonal marking. Based on accounts like Meinhof's, Nobiin was considered a toneless language for the first half of the twentieth century. The statements of de facto authorities like Meinhof, Diedrich Hermann Westermann, and Ida C. Ward heavily affected the next three decades of linguistic theorizing about stress and tone in Nobiin. As late as 1968, Herman Bell was the first scholar to develop an account of tone in Nobiin. Although his analysis was still hampered by the occasional confusion of accent and tone, he is credited by Roland Werner as being the first to recognize that Nobiin is a genuinely tonal language, and the first to lay down some elementary tonal rules. Grammar Pronouns The basic personal pronouns of Nobiin are: There are three sets of possessive pronouns. One of them is transparently derived from the set of personal pronouns plus a connexive suffix . Another set is less clearly related to the simple personal pronouns; all possessive pronouns of this set bear a high tone. The third set is derived from the second set by appending the nominalizing suffix . Nobiin has two demonstrative pronouns: 'this', denoting things nearby, and 'that', denoting things farther away. Both can function as the subject or the object in a sentence; in the latter case they take the object marker yielding and , respectively (for the object marker, see also below). The demonstrative pronoun always precedes the nouns it refers to. (this man hen one-OB have:3.sgPRESENT) 'This man has a hen.' (that girl who be.Q) 'Who is that girl?' Nouns Nouns in Nobiin are predominantly disyllabic, although monosyllabic and three- or four-syllabic nouns are also found. Nouns can be derived from adjectives, verbs, or other nouns by appending various suffixes. In plural formation, the tone of a noun becomes low and one of four plural markers is suffixed. Two of these are low in tone, while the other two have a high tone. (L): → '(sweet) dates' (L): → 'falls' (H): → 'men, people' (H): → 'chairs' In most cases it is not predictable which plural suffix a noun will take. Furthermore, many nouns can take different suffixes, e.g. 'mouth' → /. However, nouns that have final usually take Plural