University of california

Stress

1. General Observations

In 22 languages in the survey (11.8%), shown in (0), contour tones occur more freely on stressed syllables than unstressed syllables. There is no language that displays the opposite pattern in which contour tones occur more freely on unstressed than stressed syllables, when all else is equal.

These observations lead to the implicational hierarchy in (0).

In most northern Chinese dialects (Mandarin dialects according to Grime’s classification), syllables are equally stressed. But some functional or reduplicative suffixes can be stressless. Usually, only regularly stressed syllables can carry contour tones. Stressless syllables only have level tones. Among the 14 Mandarin dialects I surveyed, only Beijing has a clear description to this effect (Chao 1948, 1968, Dow 1972, 1974). Therefore I only included Beijing in the language count here.

In the next section, I provide examples from Jemez, Xhosa, Beijing Chinese, and Ciyao to illustrate the possible effects of stress on contour tone distribution.

2. Example Languages

1. Jemez

Jemez, a Kiowa Tanoan language, presents a typical case in which contour tones are restricted to stressed syllables. All syllables are open in Jemez. There is vowel length contrast on the initial syllable of the word, which is also the position for word stress. Phonetic data in Bell (1993) show that stressed short vowels are longer than unstressed short vowels. There are four tones in Jemez—H, M, L and H°L. The only distributional restriction is that H°L can only occur on the initial syllable of the word. Examples of Jemez are given in (0).

ce$ ‘stick’

co$te@ ‘antlers’ *co@te$ hypothetical

ho)^$…mu)^~te@ ‘shovel’ *ho)^@…mu)^$te@ hypothetical

2. Xhosa

As I have mentioned, Xhosa (Lanham 1958, 1963, Jordan 1966, Claughton 1983) is a Central Bantu language with penultimate stress. There is no contrastive vowel length in Xhosa, and the major phonetic correlate of stress is the prolonged duration of the vocoid. All syllables are open.¹² There are three tones in Xhosa—H, L, and H°L. On verb, noun, and qualificative stems, there are generally no restrictions on the occurrence of level tones, except that a H cannot occur after a H°L. But H°L can only occur in the penultimate position, which is the stressed position. Examples of falling tones are given in (0).

u!ku~"∫o$na~ ‘to see’ *u$ku~"∫o~na~ hypothetical

¸!s¸~"∫a$ja~ ‘sheep fold’ *u!ku$"∫o~na~ hypothetical

¸!s¸~"pÓo$xo~ ‘fool’ *u!ku~"∫o~na$ hypothetical

a!∫a~"kÓu$lu~ ‘big’
Lanham (1958) reports that in penultimate word stress is only potential, but not necessary in connected speech. When the word is not in utterance-final position, the penultimate stress and lengthening are often not realized. In this case, when the last two syllables in the word have a H°L-L tonal sequence, it is realized as H-H. This is illustrated by an example in (0): when the penultimate word stress for ¸!s¸~∫a$ya~ is lost in the utterance, it is realized as ¸!s¸~∫a!ya!. No H°L-H sequence is attested on two adjacent syllables in Xhosa.
(0) Xhosa tonal alternation:

¸!s¸~"∫a$ya~ ‘sheep fold’

¸!s¸~∫a!ya! e!s¸~"kÓu$lu~ ‘big sheep fold’
One complication in Xhosa is that H°L can also occur in the following grammatical morphemes: short perfect tense suffix /-e$/; indicative remote past tense prefixes /nda$-/, /wa$-/, etc.; first syllable of the locative demonstrative copulative /na$s¸!/; noun class 1a plural prefix /o$-/; short 2nd positional demonstrative /lo$/; and noun class 10 prefixes /¸$m-, ¸$n-, ¸$≠-, ¸$N-/. The falling tone in these morphemes does not necessarily occur in the penultimate position of the word or the utterance. But Lanham (1958, 1963) states that the vowels that carry H°L in these morphemes are lengthened. This lengthening is also reflected in the practical orthography of Xhosa, which transcribes these vowels as long.

3. Beijing Chinese

As mentioned in §4.3.1, under this category falls also Beijing, a Northern Chinese dialect in which regular syllables are equally stressed, but a stressless functional or reduplicative morpheme can sometimes occur word-finally.¹³ The difference between Beijing and the rest of the languages mentioned in this section is that in Beijing, we identify the stressless syllable instead of the stressed syllable in a word. There are four possible tones on regular syllables in Beijing: 55, 35, 21¹⁴, and 51. But on a final stressless syllable, only level tones can be realized. These syllables are usually described as having the ‘neutral tone’. Chao (1948, 1968) gives the following description of its realization under different tonal environments:

Mid after 35: ßeIü t´^.| ‘whose’

Half-High after 21: niû t´^.| ‘yours’

Low after 51: taët´_.| ‘big one(s)’

4. Ciyao

Ciyao (Sanderson 1954, Whiteley 1966, Mtenje 1993, Hyman and Ngunga 1994) is also a Bantu language. Unlike in Xhosa, vowel length is contrastive in Ciyao. In present-day Bantu languages, penultimate stress and lengthening are usually only attested in languages that have lost the vowel length contrast. Therefore, there is no clear mention of penultimate stress in Ciyao in the literature. In fact, Sanderson (1954) states that ‘In most Bantu languages the penultimate syllable is always stressed but this is not the case for Ciyao.’ (p. 2) But the following two facts indicate that we ought to be more cautious in claiming that Ciyao completely lacks penultimate stress. First, Sanderson (1954) himself hints that penultimate stress is actually often attested. He states that ‘The accent never falls on the last syllable of a word, but the addition of a monosyllabic demonstrative or locative suffix shifts it so that it falls, often strongly, on the penultimate of the resulting complete word.’ (p. 3) He also states that ‘In words of three syllables the second tends to be more (or less) accented.’ (p. 3) Second, phonetic work by Hubbard (1994) reveals that the lengthening of penultimate syllables is also present in less dramatic form in languages such as Runyambo, which has preserved the vowel length contrast in Proto-Bantu. She concludes that penultimate prominence “is a postlexical, intonational prosodic feature typical of the Bantu family” (p. 11). Therefore, we may reasonably infer that the less dramatic penultimate lengthening is also present in Ciyao, even though it is not a penultimate-stress Bantu language in the traditional sense.¹⁵

There are four surface tones in Ciyao: High (H), Low (L), Fall (H°L) and Rise (L°H). Hyman and Ngunga (1994) assume that only H is represented in the underlying representation and L is inserted as the default tone. The tonal realization rules they posit are given in (0). They assume moraic extrametricality in Ciyao: the word-final mora is extrametrical and is marked as <>. A circled  represents a toneless mora in the metrical representation, and is therefore non-final. The final syllable is subject to a final shortening rule and is therefore always monomoraic.

The High Tone Spreading rule in (0a) spreads a High tone to the following mora. The Long Spread Right rule in (0b) states that in a bimoraic (=long-voweled) syllable, if a H tone is associated with the first mora, then it spreads to the second mora of the syllable, provided that there is a toneless mora following this syllable. Since the toneless mora is non-final, this rule serves the purpose of eliminating the possibility of having a H°L contour on a pre-penultimate long vowel. The Long Penult Delinking rule in (0c) delinks a H that is linked to the second mora of the penult if the H is also linked to the first mora of the syllable. The H Pullback rule in (0d) delinks the word-final H and spreads it to the second mora of the penult if the penult has a long vowel. The Long Spread Left rule in (0e) changes a L°H contour to H on a long vowel that is pre-penultimate.

gR

H

ty

 

H
c. Long Penult Delinking:   ]_wd

 

H
d. H Pullback:  

ty |

  ]_wd

H
e. Long Spread Left: 

ty

 

H
High Tone Spreading feeds Long Spread Right, which has the following consequence: a falling tone can occur on the long vowel of a penultimate syllable, but not elsewhere. This is illustrated by the derivations in (0). High Tone Spreading also feeds Long Penult Delinking. Therefore, in the penultimate position, if a H is assigned to the first mora of a long vowel, a HL fall results. Thus the overall consequence of rules (0a)— (0c) is that the falling contour is restricted to the long vowel of the penultimate syllable of an utterance.

| |

ku-sévées-a ku-mányíidil-a High Tone Spreading

—— ku-mányíídil-a Long Spread Right

[ku-sévées-a] [ku-mányíídil-a] Output

‘to work’ ‘to know’
When a H is associated with the final mora of the utterance, the High Pullback rule in (0d) creates a rising contour on the long vowel in the penultimate position. The Long Spread Left rule in (0e) ensures that in pre-penultimate positions, no rising tone surfaces. Therefore the overall consequence of rules (0d) and (0e) is that the rising contour is also restricted to the long vowel of the penultimate syllable of an utterance.

The conspiracy of the rules posited by Hyman and Ngunga can be clearly seen: contour tones gravitate to long vowels in the stressed position; or more precisely, they are eliminated in unstressed positions. Long vowels in pre-penultimate, interpreted here an unstressed position, cannot carry contours. The analysis Hyman and Ngunga propose does capture the facts, but it misses the conspiracy, and consequently misses the phonetic considerations that motivate the analysis. Given that these phonetic considerations are independently needed in phonology, it is quite plausible that they also play a role in the data patterns here. They can be captured in the direct approach, which refers to the Canonical Durational Category for stressed long vowels—CDC('VV). This move is fully justified, as the duration for this Canonical Durational Category is the greatest among all conceivable Canonical Durational Categories in this language.

3. Local Conclusion: Stress Effects

In the discussion of the influence of stress on contour tone distribution, I have established the following implicational hierarchy: all else being equal, if an unstressed syllable can carry contours, then a stressed syllable can carry contours of equal or greater tonal complexity. Given that stressed syllables are generally longer than unstressed syllables due to lengthening under stress (see §3.2), we can conclude the following relation between the Canonical Durational Categories based on stress, when all else is equal: CDC(-stressed) > CDC(-unstressed). Then the implicational hierarchy established in the typology is consistent with the prediction of the direct approach (see §3.3.1).

The result of the survey regarding stress is also consistent with the traditional positional faithfulness approach, since stressed syllables are also privileged carriers of many other phonological contrasts. Therefore, independently, the contour distribution facts in relation to stress do not necessary constitute an argument for the direct approach for positional prominence. But this section does serve the purpose of showing that the facts are consistent with the contrast-specificity hypothesis. Together with other facts that are only consistent with the direct approach (see §4.4 and §4.5), the facts discussed in this section can be taken as part of the necessary argument for the contrast-specificity hypothesis. Moreover, if the durational hypothesis of Ciyao is correct, then we have a case in which the perception of stress is unclear, but the durational difference still leads to a positional effect on contour tone distribution. This scenario is only consistent with the direct approach, not the traditional positional faithfulness approach.

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