Volume 29, Issue 1

Languages employ a range of different means for realizing communicative functions, including word choice, morpho-syntax and prosody. The relative weight of each of these means varies cross-linguistically. In this paper, we look at the role of intonation in the realization of communicative functions in Northern Vietnamese, a language with a complex lexical tone system. Our results, which are based on systematically controlled data, show that there are a number of acoustic strategies for realizing communicative functions, predominantly based on global f0 and intensity and local sentence-final f0. These strategies are subject to a great degree of speaker variation, although this variation appears to be consistent with intonational universals as reflected in biological codes.

Contextual tonal variations in Malaysian Hokkien (Southern Min) display three features of unusual typological interest. First, our acoustic study shows that carryover and anticipatory tonal influences do not substantially differ in the magnitude, suggesting that tonal coarticulation may not be universally asymmetric, or, the carryover bias is not as robust as previously assumed. Second, carryover coarticulation is not predominantly assimilatory and anticipatory coarticulation is not dissimilatory in nature. In particular, it is attested for the first time that Progressive Dissimilation occurs in ditonal contexts. Third, another important finding is that near tone mergers are subject to distinct coarticulatory effects and exert different contextual influences on adjacent tones, suggesting that contrast preservation may be, to some extent, evoked even in phonetic realization. In conclusion, not only does this study enrich the typology of tonal coarticulation patterns, but it also argues for a new perspective on tonal coarticulation, whereby, aside from functionally motivated factors such as articulatory constraints and anti-merger, the “anomalous” patterns in Malaysian Hokkien may well be due to Final Prominence in Southern Min tone sandhi systems, i.e. priority for fully faithful rendition of the underlying tones in sandhi-final position.

The dialect of Helden (Netherlands) maintains intonational contrasts between the fall, the fall-rise, the low rise and the high rise, while also having a binary lexical tone contrast in (accented or unaccented) final syllables in the IP as well as in accented IP-internal syllables. The lexical tone contrast, which is an instance of the Central Franconian tone contrast known as Accent 1 vs Accent 2, appears in the stressed syllable of words, and so competes with the contour differences that are due to the intonational contrasts. In general, the Helden lexical contrasts fall within the phonetic variation that is available for the Standard Dutch intonation contours. The dialect maintains these multiple contrasts (a) by different timings of the falling movement in the fall and the fall-rise, which is later for Accent 2; (b) by different timings of the rising movement in the low rise, which is later for Accent 2; (c) by a lowered realization of the first H-tone after the lexical tone in the post-focal contour of the low rise and the high rise, and (d) by making IP-final rimes with Accent 2 longer than those with Accent 1.

This paper discusses the phonology of tone in Koshikijima Japanese, an endangered dialect spoken on the Koshikijima Islands in the south of Japan. Particularly interesting is the relationship between word-level and sentence-level phonology, as well as the interaction between the mora and the syllable. Separated by the sea from its neighboring dialects, Koshikijima Japanese has developed a unique prosodic system. Like its neighbors, it has a two-pattern system, where every word takes either of two tonal patterns, Type A and Type B. Unlike its neighbors, however, both tonal types can have two pitch peaks, or two high tones (Hs): Type A has a H 1 L 1 H 2 L 2 pattern, whereas Type B has a H 1 L 1 H 2 pattern. Interestingly, the first two tones of each pattern (H 1 L 1 ) are associated with words on the basis of the syllable, while the remaining tones (H 2 L 2 or H 2 ) are linked with particular moras. At the word level, the domain of the first high tone (H 1 ) can be computed only after the position of the second high tone (H 2 ) is determined, indicating that H 2 phonologically dominates H 1 . However, this dominance relationship is reversed at the sentence level, where H 2 undergoes deletion everywhere except in the sentence-final position. This paper discusses this paradoxical relationship between word-level and sentence-level tonal patterns and other related issues.

There is increasing evidence that many languages encode prosodic focus not only with phonetic variations in the focused component itself, but also with a reduction of pitch range and intensity of the post-focus components, a strategy known as post-focus compression (PFC). However, evidence is also emerging that in many other languages prosodic encoding of focus is markedly different, suggesting that PFC might be related to factors such as the presence of lexical tone, stress or the availability of morphosyntactic means of signaling focus. The current study investigated the production and perception of focus in Taiwanese, Taiwan Mandarin and Beijing Mandarin, three languages/dialects that are all tonal and that have similar morphosyntactic means for indicating focus. Results showed clear evidence of PFC in Beijing Mandarin but lack of it in Taiwanese and Taiwan Mandarin, suggesting that PFC is independent of the factors mentioned above. Most interestingly, Taiwan Mandarin seems to have lost PFC due to close contact with Taiwanese despite its effectiveness as demonstrated by the perceptual experiment. The new findings, taken together with other recent finding about prosodic focus, seem to suggest that PFC is a “hard-to-evolve” prosodic feature that may have a single historical origin. Thus there is a need for large scale experimental research to explore the cross-linguistic distribution of PFC, so as to broaden our understanding of not only prosodic typology, but also language contact, bilingualism and language evolution in general.