Lexical Tone, Intonation, and Their Interaction: A Scopal Theory of Tune Association

Masayuki Katagiri Gibson
2013 Zenodo  
There is still much to be learned regarding the nature of the interaction between lexical tone and utterance-level intonation. Previous studies in individual languages tend to be too narrow, focusing on ways to model the final F0 output without regard to cross-linguistic implications; studies mainly concerned with phonological patterns across languages tend to over-generalize, missing or glossing over many language-specific and category-specific phenomena. This dissertation attempts to address
more » ... he gap left by these previous studies. The first part of the dissertation presents results from a series of production and perception experiments conducted for a handful of tone languages, including Standard Mandarin, Henanhua, Cantonese, North Kyeongsang Korean, and Kansai Japanese (a family of dialects including Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe Japanese). The production experiments were designed to elicit multiple renditions of various lexical tones in declarative and echo question contexts, and the perceptual experiments were designed to test the degree of recoverability for each communicative function (lexical tone and utterance-type intonation) in the various conditions. The second part of the dissertation considers the implications of the experimental results for building a comprehensive model of speech melody. First, by examining the behavior of intonation across tonal categories within each language, it is shown that there is evidence for unpredictable tone-dependent intonation implementation, suggesting that our model must allow for some interaction between the two at some level before phonetic implementation (a principle taken for granted by some models and ruled out by others). In addition, the results are assessed cross-linguistically, characterizing the ways in which the model must be parameterized. Finally, an enhanced autosegmental-metrical model that meets both of the above demands is proposed. The model includes an autosegmental geometry that encodes lexical tones in languages like Mandarin and Cantonese as t [...]
doi:10.5281/zenodo.3732036 fatcat:sqscdgyzwfatpdeikauz5mjd7q