Tones in Zhangzhou: Pitch and Beyond

This study draws on various approaches—field linguistics; auditory and acoustic phonetics; and statistics—to explore and explain the nature of Zhangzhou tones, an under-described Southern Min variety. Several original findings emerged from the analyses of the data from 21 speakers. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional. The single parameter of pitch/F0 is not sufficient to characterise tonal contrasts in either monosyllabic or polysyllabic settings in Zhangzhou. Instead, various parameters, including pitch/F0, duration, vowel quality, voice quality, and syllable coda type, interact in a complicated but consistent way to code tonal distinctions. Zhangzhou has eight tones rather than seven tones as proposed in previous studies. This finding resulted from examining the realisations of diverse parameters across three different contexts—isolation, phrase-initial, and phrase-final—, rather than classifying tones in citation and in terms of the preservation of Middle Chinese tonal categories. Tonal contrasts in Zhangzhou can be neutralised across different linguistic contexts. Identifying the number of tonal contrasts based simply on tonal realisations in the citation environment is not sufficient. Instead, examining tonal realisations across different linguistic contexts beyond monosyllables is imperative for understanding the nature of tone. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is syntactically relevant. The tone sandhi domain is not phonologically determined but rather is aligned with a syntactic phrase XP. Within a given XP, the realisations of the tones at non-phrase-final positions undergo alternation phonologically and phonetically. Nevertheless, the alterations are sensitive only to the phrase boundaries and are not affected by the internal structure of syntactic phrases. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is phonologically inert but phonetically sensitive. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones in disyllabic phrases are not categorically affected by their surrounding tones but are phonetically sensitive to surrounding environments. For instance, the pitch/F0 onsets of phrase-final tones are largely sensitive to pitch/F0 offsets of preceding tones and appear to have diverse variants. The mappings between Zhangzhou citation and disyllabic tones are morphologically conditioned. Phrase-initial tones are largely not related to the citation tones at either the phonological or the phonetic level while phrase-final tones are categorically related to the citation tones but phonetically are not quite the same because of predictable sensitivity to surrounding environments. Each tone in Zhangzhou can be regarded as a single morpheme having two alternating allomorphs (tonemes), one for non-phrase-final variants and one for variants in citation and phrase-final contexts, both of which are listed in the mental lexicon of native Zhangzhou speakers but are phonetically distant on the surface. In summary, the realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional, involving a variety of segmental and suprasegmental parameters. The interactions of Zhangzhou tones are complicated, involving phonetics, phonology, syntax, and morphology. Neutralisation of Zhangzhou tonal contrasts occurs across different contexts, including citation, phrase-final, and non-phrase-final. Thus, researchers must go beyond pitch to understand tone thoroughly as a phenomenon in Southern Min

Automatic prosodic analysis for computer aided pronunciation teaching

Correct pronunciation of spoken language requires the appropriate modulation of acoustic characteristics of speech to convey linguistic information at a suprasegmental level. Such prosodic modulation is a key aspect of spoken language and is an important component of foreign language learning, for purposes of both comprehension and intelligibility. Computer aided pronunciation teaching involves automatic analysis of the speech of a non-native talker in order to provide a diagnosis of the learner's performance in comparison with the speech of a native talker. This thesis describes research undertaken to automatically analyse the prosodic aspects of speech for computer aided pronunciation teaching. It is necessary to describe the suprasegmental composition of a learner's speech in order to characterise significant deviations from a native-like prosody, and to offer some kind of corrective diagnosis. Phonological theories of prosody aim to describe the suprasegmental composition of speech..

Tone Sandhi Phenomena In Taiwan Southern Min

This dissertation investigates various aspects of the tone sandhi phenomena in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM). Previous studies have reported complete tonal neutralization between the two sandhi 33 variants derived respectively from citation 55 and 24 variants, leading to the claim that tone sandhi in this language is categorical. The fact that tone sandhi in TSM is assumed to possess a mixture of properties of lexical and postlexical rules gives rise to the debate over the status of this phonological rule. The findings of the dissertation shows incomplete neutralization between the two sandhi 33 variants with an indication of an ongoing sound change towards a near- or complete tonal merger, possibly led by female speakers. In addition, citation form is proposed to be more underlyingly represented on account of the fact that subjects, especially old speakers, have stronger association with citation variants than with sandhi variants in the priming experiment. The spontaneous corpus study suggests that the Tone Circle is merely a phonological idealization in light of the systematic subphonemic difference in f0 between citation X and sandhi X that are supposed to correspond even with some control of conceivable confounding factors. By comparing direct- and indirect-reference models, I argue that tone sandhi in TSM should be analyzed as a head-left Concatenation rule within a DM-based theoretical framework

Effects of Phonological Contrast on Within-Category Phonetic Variation

This dissertation investigates an often assumed hypothesis in phonetics and phonology: that there should be relatively less within-category phonetic variation in production in languages which have relatively more phonological contrasts (Lindblom, 1986, on vowels). Although this hypothesis is intuitive, there is little existing evidence to support the claim and it is difficult to generalize outside of vowels. In this dissertation, I argue that this hypothesis is not trivially true and needs additional specification. I propose an extension of this hypothesis, Contrast-Dependent Variation, which predicts relative differences in extent of within-category variation between languages and individual speakers. Contrast-Dependent Variation can make predictions across multiple phonetic spaces as it considers individual phonetic dimensions to be the relevant units of comparison, rather than phonological inventory subsets (stops, vowels, etc.). Relative differences in extent of within-category variation are predicted by differences in cue weight, rather than differences in number of phonemes. The dissertation tests this hypothesis by examining two between-language case studies: stops in Hindi and English and sibilants in French and Polish. I also consider a within-language case study: individual differences in extent of within-category variation in Mandarin sibilants. The results here show that differences in extent of phonetic variability between languages and speakers are systematic; they are structured according to the system of phonological contrasts

The production and comprehension of tone in Innu

Plusieurs auteurs ont attesté l'emploi de pitch contrastif en innu, une langue qui fait partie de la branche centrale des langues algonquiennes. Il n'y a pourtant que trois études acoustiques de ce phénomène prosodique (Rochette et Guay 1975, Martin 1980 et Malo 1981), qui portent toutes uniquement sur des formes flexionnelles verbales du dialecte de Mingan et qui ont produit des résultats contradictoires. Jusqu'à maintenant, on a porté très peu d'attention aux autres emplois des tons dans cette langue. Seuls les travaux de Drapeau (1979 et 2006) et Drapeau et Mailhot (1989) rendent compte de ce phénomène et de son origine dans le dialecte de l'Ouest, mais les analyses acoustiques restent à venir. Dans le but de fournir des données phonétiques synchroniques, qui permettraient de confirmer l'existence et l'emploi des tons dans le dialecte de l'Ouest, et pour connaître les éléments phonétiques qui jouent dans la production de ce phénomène, nous avons choisi d'effectuer un test de production et un test de compréhension auprès de plusieurs locuteurs natifs de deux communautés innues (Betsiamites et Sept-Iles). Nos résultats démontrent l'existence d'un ton bas sur la syllabe finale des mots qui ont subi le processus d'apocope ou celui de dégemination des consonnes en finale de mot. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Phonétique, Ton, Pitch, Innu

Second language acquisition of intonation: Peak alignment in American English

The objective of the present study was to investigate (1) whether, and to what degree, late bilinguals of different L1 backgrounds are comparable to native speakers in the phonetic implementation of tonal targets in their L2, (2) whether they exhibit general patterns of acquisition irrespective of the typological closeness of their L1 to their L2, and (3) whether learners’ choice of accent contours and the alignment of the high tone (H∗) proceeds in parallel with proficiency in the L2. More specifically, we examined the acquisition of the nuclear contour composition and the H∗ alignment of the American English (L)H∗L- (i.e. pitch accent and boundary tone combination) in initial-stressed and final-stressed words by Japanese and Spanish late bilingual speakers at varying proficiency levels in American English. Our results show that the L1 Spanish speakers were more comparable than the L1 Japanese speakers to the native English speakers in the phonological aspect of intonation (choice of pitch accent contour). In terms of peak alignment, we found that the late bilinguals generally tended to realise significantly later alignment than the native speakers, although the precise manifestation of this varied according to the L1 background of speakers and the stress pattern of words.This research was supported by a PhD scholarship awarded to the first author from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and St John's College, University of Cambridge, and by a PhD research support grant from the Japan Foundation. These sources of support are gratefully acknowledged

Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody