A Constraint-based Analysis of Obligatory Contour Principle in Anaang Morphological Constructions

The obligatory contour principle forbids identical consecutive features in the underlying representation. This work undertakes a description of the Anaang tonal structure, the tonal behaviour of compounds and reduplicates in the language, bearing in mind their sensitivity to the OCP and the environments that trigger the adherence. An adapted Ibadan wordlist of 400 Basic Items (Trial) English version was used via interview for data collection from six men and six women within Abak Local Government Area in Akwa Ibom State. The data were analysed using optimality theoretical framework. The analysis shows that Anaang compounds as well as reduplicates exhibit cases of tonal modifications in line with OCP. For compounds, the tone of the second noun changes depending on the tonal sequence. In the HH noun base, the second-high tone of the second noun changes to a low tone, in the LH noun base, the tone of the second noun is raised to a down-stepped high tone, the LL noun base sees the tone of the second noun being raised to a high tone. For reduplication, the tone of the L verb base changes when the redup lication is partial. When the reduplication is complete, the high tone of the second noun is down-stepped.

Intonational processing is incremental and holistic

Speakers modulate the intonation of an utterance to express essential communicative functions, and while intonational pitch contours span entire utterances, intonational melodies can be characterized as a sequence of discrete tonal events. A tonal event may constrain the interpretation of a temporally distant tonal event, and the entire tonal sequence is potentially relevant for recognizing a speaker’s communicative intention. The question arises whether listeners process intonational information as soon as they become available (incremental processing) or whether they wait until they have access to the entire intonation contour with all its tonal events (holistic processing). In a visual world eyetracking experiment, we explored how and when American English listeners integrate a sequence of two pitch accents relative to the discourse status of different referents. Analyses of listeners’ fixation patterns suggest that listeners incrementally process pitch accents as soon as they appear in the signal, and use this information to reduce uncertainty about the referents of both local and downstream expressions. Listeners also process early and late pitch accents in relation to one another, such that early cues in the utterance can restrict later inferences and late cues can be used to resolve uncertainty associated with earlier cues. These findings have implications for models of intonational processing, for which neither a local processing strategy nor a holistic view alone are sufficient. Effective comprehension of intonational events requires maintaining perceptual information long enough to integrate it with downstream intonational events. Open data, scripts, and materials can be retrieved here: https://osf.io/2wecs/.

The phonetics and phonology of lexical prosody in San Jerónimo Acazulco Otomi

San Jerónimo Acazulco Otomi (SJAO) is an underdescribed and endangered Oto-Manguean language spoken in central Mexico. This paper provides an analysis of the phonology of tonal contrasts in SJAO and the phonetics of their realization based on pitch pattern data derived from audio recordings of citation forms of SJAO words. Each SJAO lexical word has one and only one tonal sequence – either /H/ or /HL/. This sequence is underlyingly associated with one syllable in the word. Other syllables are not specified for tone, and their phonetic realization is predictable depending on their position relative to the tonal syllable. A phonetic analysis revealed that underlyingly-tonal syllables are phonetically distinct from non-tonal syllables: those with /H/ are produced with greater vocal effort (measured by spectral tilt), and those with /HL/ are longer, louder, and bear a higher f0 (fundamental frequency), compared with non-tonal syllables. This analysis differs from previous accounts of lexical prosody in other Otomi varieties, which have either described a three-way system of high, low, and rising tones contrasting on every stem syllable, or a system where one syllable per word is assigned a stress-like ‘accent’. This difference from previous analyses suggests that there is a third possible characterization of lexical prosody for Otomi, which is appropriate for SJAO and potentially other understudied varieties.

On Musical Dissonance

psychoacoustic theories of dissonance often follow Helmholtz and attribute it to partials (fundamental frequencies or overtones) near enough in frequency to affect the same region of the basilar membrane and therefore to cause roughness, i.e., rapid beating. In contrast, tonal theories attribute dissonance to violations of harmonic principles embodied in Western music. We propose a dual-process theory that embeds roughness within tonal principles. The theory predicts the robust increasing trend in the dissonance of triads: major < minor < diminished < augmented. Previous experiments used too few chords for a comprehensive test of the theory, and so Experiment 1 examined the rated dissonance of all 55 possible three-note chords, and Experiment 2 examined a representative sample of 48 of the possible four-note chords. The participants' ratings concurred reliably and corroborated the dual-process theory. Experiment 3 showed that, as the theory predicts, consonant chords are rated as less dissonant when they occur in a tonal sequence (the cycle of fifths) than in a random sequence, whereas this manipulation has no reliable effect on dissonant chords outside common musical practice.