Penultimate lengthening is a common, syntactically induced process in southern African Bantu languages. It is described as predictable lengthening of penultimate vowels at the right edge of a clause boundary or at the end of a phrase. It is often described in relation to conjoint/disjoint forms, as these forms typically occur in syntactic positions in which the difference is salient. While this phenomenon is often presented as a two-way distinction, mentions of multiple distinctions can be found in several languages. Donnelly (2009: 302) mentions “discourse emphasis” used in Phuthi and other Nguni languages, in which the present indicative long form (ya-) can be used utterance-medially with a short PU vowel, but behaves tonally as a final form: the tone target is the APU. Cassimjee & Kisseberth (2001: 355–356) write that ya-marked verbs in isiXhosa show final lengthening “even though [they are] not literally final”, that is, not utterance-final, but phrase-final. Zeller, Zerbian & Cook (2017) investigate syntactic phrasing in isiZulu and find that phrase-final, utterance-medial forms induce lengthening that is not as salient as that found utterance-finally. However, detailed studies beyond individual verb forms are still missing (Zerbian & Barnard 2008). In this talk we will present the preliminary results on our work on penultimate lengthening in isiNdebele. Three penultimate lengths have been identified 1) utterance-final, that is, the forms in which the PU is fully lengthened, e.g. nouns in object position or disjunctive verb forms; 2) phrase-medial with short PU vowels, for example, when nouns are followed by a modifier or with conjoint verb forms; and 3) phrase-final but utterance medial with vowel length between the fully lengthened utterance-final form and the short phrase-medial form – for example when the noun is followed by an adverb which does not belong to the same phonological phrase as the noun but is in the same utterance; or when a disjunctive form is followed by an object outside the verb phrase. Interestingly, in Phuthi and isiZulu the “medial forms” as discussed by Donnelly (2009) and Zeller, Zerbian & Cook (2017) behave tonally like the utterance-final forms, but in isiNdebele, these forms pattern tonally with the phrase-medial forms. References Cassimjee, Farida & Charles W. Kisseberth 2001. Zulu Tonology and Its Relationship to Other Nguni Languages. In: In: Sh. Kaji (ed.) Proceedings of the Symposium Cross-Linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena: Tonogenesis, Japanese Accentology, and Other Topics: 327–359. Tokyo: ILCAA. Donnelly, Simon Scurr 2009. Aspect of Tone and Voice in Phuthi. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Zeller, Jochen, Sabine Zerbian & Toni Cook 2017. Prosodic Evidence for Syntactic Phrasing in Zulu. In: J. van der Wal & L.M. Hyman (eds), The Conjoint/Disjoint Alternation in Bantu (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 301): 295–328. Zerbian, Sabine & Etienne Barnard 2008. Phonetics of Intonation in South African Bantu Languages.Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 26 (2): 235–54.