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Proximity to Prosodic Boundaries
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- Example Languages
- Luganda
- Chinese Dialects
- Local Conclusion: Final Effects
Proximity to Prosodic BoundariesGeneral ObservationsThe advantages of the final syllable for contour tone bearing has already been pointed out by Clark (1983). Clark was the first to attribute this effect to final lengthening. The languages that she claims to have such an effect include Oh)uh)u Igbo, Kikuyu, and Peki Ewe. My survey further establishes the correlation between final syllable and contour tone bearing. Let us notice that the effect of prosodic-final positions on contour tone distribution is only predicted by the direct approach to positional prominence, since these positions are not privileged contrast-licensing positions in a general-purpose fashion and are usually non-neutralizing with respect to length, hence the effect cannot be captured in the traditional positional faithfulness or the representational approach. In 47 languages in the survey (25.1%), contour tones occur more freely on the final syllable of words or utterances than non-final syllables. The languages that display this pattern are given in (0). There is no language that displays the opposite pattern.
These observations lead to the implicational hierarchy in (0). (0) All else being equal, if non-final syllables in a prosodic domain can carry contours, then the final syllable of the same prosodic domain can carry contours with equal or greater tonal complexity. In the next section, I provide examples from Etung, Luganda, Mianmin, and a number of Chinese dialects to illustrate the effects of proximity to prosodic boundaries on contour tone distribution. Example LanguagesEtungLet us first look at Etung (Edmondson and Bendor-Samuel 1966), another Bantu language. There are three basic tones in Etung—High (H), Low (L), and Downstep (!H). The syllable in Etung can be of the shape CV, CVO or CVR. There does not seem to be vowel length contrast. While there is no restriction on the occurrence of level tones, the falling and rising contours (H°L, H°!H, L°H) are restricted to the final syllable of phonological words. Edmondson and Bendor-Samuel accounts for this effect by considering tone to be a feature of the phonological word. They identify 12 patterns of tonal melody composed of the three level tones and map them from left to right to syllables in a phonological word. These patterns are shown in (0). (0) Patterns 1 L L L L L L 2a L H H L H L°H 2b !H H H !H H !H 3 H L L H L H°L 4 H H H H H H 5 L H L L H°L — 6 L L H L L°H — 7 H H L H H°L — 8 H !H H H !H H°!H 9 H L H H L°H — 10 L H !H L H°!H — 11 H H !H H H°!H —
LugandaLuganda presents another interesting example for this pattern. I have mentioned in §4.2.2.3 that Luganda can have a falling tone on non-final CVV, CVR, and CVO syllables, but it can also have a falling tone on a word-final CV syllable. What makes the CV syllable in final position special so that it can carry contour tones? Luganda has vowel length contrast, but it has a phonological rule that shortens the long vowel in final position to a short vowel, eliminating the vowel length contrast in this position (Stevick 1969). Without this contrast, it is possible that there is a strong final lengthening effect, as no length contrast will be jeopardized. Stevick (1969) in fact uses a raised dot to indicate phonetic lengthening of the final short vowel when it carries a falling tone. I therefore hypothesize that the word-final syllable is subject to strong final lengthening, and the extra duration facilitates the realization of contour tones. To test this hypothesis, 20 disyllabic words were extracted from a Luganda tape made by Laura Collins in 1972 in the UCLA Language Archive and digitized using Kay Elemetrics CSL. The vowel duration of the initial syllable was measured for 12 words; the vowel duration for the final syllable was measured for 12 words as well, some overlapping with the former group.16 To eliminate the influence of syllable type, vowel length and tone, all targeted syllables are open, contain a short vowel, and are level-toned.17 The vowel quality was also matched between the two groups (seven [a]’s, two [u]’s, two [i]’s, one [e]). To compare the duration of short vowels with long vowels, seven trisyllabic words which contain a long vowel in the penultimate position were also included in the study. Among the seven measured vowels, there are three [a]’s, two [i]’s, one [e] and one [o]. The complete word list is given in (0). (0) Luganda word list:
The duration results are given in the bar-plot in (0). A one-way ANOVA with vowel duration as the dependent variable and vowel type/position as the independent variable shows a significant effect: F(2, 28)=63.337, p<.0001. Fisher’s PLSD post-hoc tests show that all pairs of comparison are significant at p<.0001 level. (0) Luganda vowel duration (ms): 
The study clearly shows that there is a significant degree of lengthening of the final short vowels. This lends strong support to the hypothesis that a lengthened duration is responsible for the privileged status of final short vowels to carry the falling contour in Luganda. Chinese DialectsAnother group of languages that exhibits the effect of prosodic boundaries is a number of Chinese dialects; e.g., Beijing, Kunming, Nanchang, Nanjing. In these languages, there is usually one complex contour tone with three pitch targets, e.g., 214, 353. In tone sandhi behavior, this tone only surfaces in word-final position. We can again take Beijing as an example. The third tone in Beijing is realized as 214 in isolation and word-finally, but as 21 when it precedes 55, 35 and 51, and as 35 when it precedes another 214. This is summarized in (0).
35-214 —> 35-214 214-35 —> 21-35 214-214 —> 35-214 214-214 —> 35-214 51-214 —> 51-214 214-51 —> 21-51 In seeking the account for the ability of final syllable to carry complex contour tones, we may again hypothesize that prosodic-final lengthening is responsible. To confirm the presence of final-lengthening in Beijing Chinese, phonetic data were collected from two male native speakers—ZJ (the author) and LHY. Each speaker was recorded reading the nonsense word ma55-ma55 with ten repetitions in the sound booth of the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory. Both syllables in the target word were stressed equally, and the high-level tone was used for both syllables to avoid circularity. The data were subsequently digitized onto Kay Elemetrics CSL at a sampling rate of 20kHz; spectrograms were made for each token; and the duration of the vowel in the two syllables was measured from the spectrogram window. The first and last of the repetitions were not used for the analyses. The mean vowel duration for the two syllables is shown in the bar-plot in (0). The error bar indicates one standard deviation. A one-way ANOVA with vowel duration as the dependent variable and syllable type as the independent variable shows a significant effect: F(1,30)=181.835, p<0.0001. (0) Beijing vowel duration (ms): 
Local Conclusion: Final EffectsThe following implicational hierarchy has been established in this section: all else being equal, if non-final syllables in a prosodic domain can carry contours, then the final syllable of the same prosodic domain can carry contours with equal or greater tonal complexity. Given that the prosodic-final syllable is longer than nonfinal syllables due to final-lengthening (see §3.2), we can safely conclude the following relation between the Canonical Durational Categories based on the proximity of a syllable to a prosodic boundary, when all else is equal: CDC(-final) > CDC(-nonfinal). Then the implicational hierarchy established in the typology is consistent with the predictions of the direct approach to contour tone distribution. Moreover, the advantages of final syllables in a prosodic domain for contour bearing are only consistent with the predictions of the direct approach. This is because, as we have seen in Chapter 2, these syllables are durationally advantageous due to final lengthening, and abundant duration is the most crucial factor for contour-bearing. Moreover, prosodic-final position is far from being a general-purpose prominent position. In fact, a cross-linguistic survey by Beckman (1998) shows that neutralization of contrasts is very common in non-initial syllables, which include final syllables. Consequently, we expect the segmental inventory in non-initial syllables to be typically a subset of that in root-initial syllables. The table in (0), excerpted from Beckman (1998: p.56), illustrates this point.
Steriade (1994), on the other hand, shows that the word-final position is sometimes a privileged position for some vocalic contrasts, which include nasality, roundness, laxness, backness, and subtle distinctions of height. But these contrasts share the commonality that they are perceptually difficult. Apparently, contrasts in nasality, laxness, and subtle distinctions of height require perceptual differentiation of small magnitudes of spectrographic differences, and are thus perceptually difficult. Moreover, Kaun (1995) has argued that contrasts that are acoustically manifested by F2 are perceptually weaker than those that are manifested by F1 due to F2’s weaker inherent intensity and higher frequency. This explains the perceptual difficulty of backness contrasts as compared to height contrasts, since the former are primarily cued by F2 and the latter primarily by F1. This is also supported by cross-linguistic studies of vowel inventories: there seems to be no vowel inventories that lack height contrasts, while a number of languages, such as Kabardian (Kuipers 1960), Higi (Mohrlang 1971), and Marshallese (Bender 1971, Choi 1992), have been reported to lack backness contrasts, as pointed out by Donegan (1985). Finally, Kaun (1995), based on the enhancement theory proposed by Stevens, Keyser, and Kawasaki (1986), argues that when the roundness opposition and the backness opposition do not stand in a mutually enhancement relationship in a language, the perceptual cues for these contrasts will be relatively weak. Steriade (1994) argues that, given that these contrasts are perceptually difficult, they will ideally seek durationally abundant positions to be realized, since ‘extra duration means extra exposure to a dubious vowel quality and thus a better chance to identify it correctly’ (Steriade 1994: p.20), and word-final syllables provides this extra duration due to final lengthening. Therefore, the point is that prosodic-final positions are not general-purpose prominent positions. They specifically benefit contrasts that require a long duration, and contour tones fall under this category. These facts are only consistent with the direct approach to positional prominence. Finally, we must address the issue whether the final syllable of a prosodic domain, or the duration advantages of these syllables, must be referred to directly in the phonology. The mora, as a phonological length unit, seems to be a viable alternative, and this is the alternative that the representational approach explores. Even though there are many languages that neutralize vowel length contrast in final position, such as Luganda (Ashton et al. 1954, Tucker 1962, Snoxall 1967, Stevick 1969, Hyman and Katamba 1990, 1993), Tagalog (Schachter and Otanes 1972), Pacific Yupik (Leer 1985), and Mutsun (Okrand 1977), final lengthening is by no means always neutralizing, and the effect of final position on contour tone distribution is not restricted to languages that have neutralizing final lengthening. Therefore, a representational approach using the mora is too restricted a theory to allow a comprehensive account of all the data patterns. Another likely alternative mentioned above is the Generalized Alignment schema proposed by McCarthy and Prince (1993), since intuitively, the gravitation of contour tones to the final syllable may be captured by Align-R constraints. I return to this issue in §6.2, in which I show that without specifically referring to the final syllables or the durational advantage they induce, the alignment constraints themselves cannot capture all the desired effects. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 3.01 Mb. Share with your friends:
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