The prosodic structure and pitch accent of Northern Kyungsang Korean

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jongho Jun ◽  
Jungsun Kim ◽  
Hayoung Lee ◽  
Sun-Ah Jun
Probus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miran Kim ◽  
Lori Repetti

Abstract This study presents new data on pitch accent alignment in Sardinian, a Romance language spoken in Italy. We propose that what has been described as “stress shift” in encliticization processes is not a change in the word level stress, but variation in the association of the pitch accent. Our claim is that word level stress remains in situ, and the falling tune which our data exhibit can be interpreted as a bitonal pitch accent (HL*) associated with the entire verb + enclitic unit: the starred tone is associated with the rightmost metrically prominent syllable, and the leading tone is associated with the word-level stressed syllable. The research questions we address are twofold: (i) how are the landing sites of the two tonal targets phonetically identified; (ii) how are the phonetic facts reconciled with prosodic structure.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-115
Author(s):  
Taehong Cho ◽  
Dong Jin Kim ◽  
Sahyang Kim

Abstract Theories of the phonetics-prosody interface suggest that prosodic strengthening that arises with prosodic structuring is not simply a low-level phonetic phenomenon, but it serves as a phonetic hallmark of a higher-order prosodic structure in reference to linguistic (phonological) contrast. The present study builds on this theoretical premise by examining acoustic realization of the phonological tonal contrast in the lexical pitch accent system of South Kyungsang (SK) Korean. Results showed that phonetic realization of F0 and the degree of glottalization (as reflected in spectral tilt measures such as H1-A1c and H1-A3c) of vowels in vowel-initial words were systematically modulated by the higher-order prosodic structure, and that the prosodic-structural modulation gave rise to distinct prosodic strengthening effects as a function of the source of prosodic strengthening. In particular, the prominence-induced strengthening (due to focus) entailed a phonetic polarizing effect on the F0 contrast in a way that enhances the phonological High vs. Low tone contrast. The boundary-induced strengthening effect, on the other hand, could be better understood as enhancing the phonetic clarity of prosodic junctures. The distinct prosodic strengthening effects were further evident in the way that glottalization was fine-tuned according to prosodic structure and phonological (tonal) contrast. Prosodic strengthening effects were also found to interact with intrinsic vowel height, implying that the low-level phonetic effect may be under speaker control in reference to higher-order prosodic and phonological contrast systems of the language. Finally, the results informed a theoretical debate regarding whether the Low tone that contrasts with the High tone in word-initial position should be considered lexically specified vs. post-lexical assigned.


Author(s):  
Utulu, Don C. ◽  
Ajiboye, Emuobonuvie ◽  
M. and Ajede, Chika K.

Studies on tonal adaptation strategies in English loanwords of the Nigerian languages (NLs): Yoruba (Y), Hausa (H), Bini (B) and Emai (E) commonly translate the prosodic structure of the loanwords into native prosodic configurations. Translation of pitch melody of borrowed words in the NLs tends to be determined by the position of English word stress. Comparative/typological studies that independently examine such tonal adaptation in Nigerian smaller languages are scanty. Consequently, this paper examines the pattern of word stress adaptation into tone in English loanwords in Èwùlù (Igboid) and Ùrhòbò (Edoid), with a view to revealing the Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò tonal adaptation features common to Y, H, B and E but specific to Èwùlù and/or Ùrhòbò. The empirical observations of data are explained with Autosegmental Theory (Goldsmith, 1976), which formally expresses the relations that hold between the tone loans, tone bearing units and CV nodes operating at different tiers. Findings of this study show/confirm that the English citation pitch accent H*L% basically governs the domain of adaptation of (H)igh tone and (L)ow in loans. Moreover, findings reveal that inserted vowels in CC-clusters in Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò loans are inherently toneless, acquiring their tones from adjacent tones. However, the study identifies two salient peculiar patterns: (1) Ùrhòbò assigns low tone on intervening V element in CC-cluster, a domain characteristically assigned H tone in Èwùlù, Y, H, B, and E. (2) Ùrhòbò regularly simplifies source H*L% as /H/ in adapted source CVC, a context where Èwùlù and the aforementioned NLs rather adapt /H.L/ melody to realise vowel doubling. To this end, the current researchers recommend further comparative or typological studies on English loanwords in other NLs to further identify patterns of tone adaptation and resyllabification rules in loanwords similar to those of Urhobo in particular.


Author(s):  
Sónia Frota ◽  
Pilar Prieto ◽  
Gorka Elordieta

This chapter describes the main features of the prosodic systems of Basque, Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) model. In its word prosody, Basque comprises pitch-accent and stress systems, while the other languages differ in the distribution of final and antepenultimate lexical stress. A discussion of prosodic phrasing and phrasal prominence patterns reveals that accentual phrases play a crucial role in Basque, but not in Catalan, Spanish, or Portuguese, which differ in their higher prosodic structure. Melodic patterns vary in the complexity and distribution of pitch events as well as in their ability to express sentence modality and focus in collaboration with lexical and syntactic markers. The division of labour between prosodic and morphosyntactic encodings varies greatly, with Basque displaying a heavier syntactic load and the other languages having a more varied melodic functionality. Some unresolved research issues are highlighted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Junko Ito ◽  
Armin Mester

Abstract While recent work has made it abundantly clear that the metrical foot is fundamental for any understanding of the accent pattern of Japanese and its dialects, other features of these pitch accent systems are directly linked to the constraints aligning tonal melodies with prosodic structure. This paper presents some results on the microvariation in the pitch accent systems of the dialects of Kagoshima Prefecture: the main Kagoshima City dialect, and the separate dialects of Koshikijima island and the southernmost Kikaijima island (Ryukyu archipelago). All these dialects, except for the Kagoshima City dialect, are in serious decline in terms of numbers of speakers. We show that the accentual microvariation in Kagoshima Japanese is due to a simple reranking of the basic constraints aligning the accentual melodies HL and H. The difference in tone-bearing unit between dialects (syllable- vs. mora-counting behavior), difficult to analyze as a parameter setting, follows from the ranking of constraints against tonal contours on moras and syllables.


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Braun ◽  
Tobias Galts ◽  
Barış Kabak

Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends on the first language (L1) prosodic structure and, if so, how. We tested participants from a stress language (German), a language without word stress (French), a language with restricted lexical tonal contrasts (Japanese), and Mandarin Chinese controls. Furthermore, German has a rich intonational structure, while French and Japanese dispose of fewer utterance-level pitch contrasts. The participants learnt associations between disyllabic non-words (4 tonal contrasts) and objects and indicated whether picture–word pairs matched with what they had learnt (complete match, segmental or tonal mismatch conditions). In the tonal mismatch condition, the Mandarin Chinese controls had the highest sensitivity, followed by the German participants. The French and Japanese participants showed no sensitivity towards these tonal contrasts. Utterance-level prosody is hence better able to predict success in second language (L2) tone learning than word prosody.


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