Level Tones

The Western dialect of Naxi has four lexical tones: High, Mid, Low and Rising; the latter is rare in the lexicon. Rising contours on monosyllables are frequent in connected speech, however, as a result of a process of syllable reduction: reduction of a morpheme carrying the High tone results in re-association of its tone to the syllable that precedes it in the sentence, creating a rising contour. An experiment (with one speaker and five listeners) establishes that there is not only one rising contour that originates in tonal reassociation, as reported in earlier descriptions, but two: Low-to-High and Mid-to-High—as could be expected by analogy with phenomena observed in Niger-Congo languages and elsewhere. A second set of experiments (same speaker; six listeners) investigates the reduction of Mid- and Low-tone syllables: they reduce to [ə̄] and [ə̀], respectively, and coalesce with the preceding syllable (in Naxi, syllabic structure is simply consonant+glide+vowel). Unlike High-tone syllable reduction, this process stops short of complete tonal de-linking. These experiments aim to provide a complete picture of syllable reduction patterns in Naxi. It is argued that the notions of floating tones and tonal reassociation can be usefully applied to the Naxi data.

This thesis documents the nature and character of initial tonal strategies native English speakers employ when learning Yoruba as a second language, using elicited imitation and other computer tonal analysis of errors and strategies on 40 human subjects of various selected backgrounds. This research also provides initial insight into the detail of tonal acquisition in second language learning in general, allowing for future acquisition and learning procedures to be better understood and better prescribed.

This thesis documents the nature and character of initial tonal strategies native English speakers employ when learning Yoruba as a second language, using elicited imitation and other computer tonal analysis of errors and strategies on 40 human subjects of various selected backgrounds. This research also provides initial insight into the detail of tonal acquisition in second language learning in general, allowing for future acquisition and learning procedures to be better understood and better prescribed.

Lataddi Narua is the first reported variety of a Naish language having only two tonal levels; all other Naish languages described to date have three. The language uses a system in which level tones are primary, and tones are associated to lexical items rather than to individual syllables. Four tone categories are identified for nouns and adjectives, and six for verbs. Processes of tonal interaction across word boundaries are discussed, from tonal morphology to observations about syntactic and semantic factors influencing the placement of tone group boundaries within a sentence.

The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F0 and voice quality characteristics: two of the four tones (tones 3 and 4) were reported to be breathy in studies from the 1970s. For the present research (thirty years later), audio and electroglottographic data were collected from 5 speakers of the Risiangku dialect in their 30s or 40s. Voice quality is estimated by computing the glottal open quotient. The present results bear on 788 syllables (from a corpus of 6,500). They show that in the speech of three speakers (M2, M3, M5), tones 3 and 4 have a higher open quotient (which provides an indirect cue to the degree of breathiness) than tones 1 and 2, with tone 3 more clearly so than tone 4, especially for speaker M2. The difference in open quotient between the four tones for the other two speakers is negligible or inconsistent. The Tamang data are compared with similar data from Naxi, which possesses level tones, and from Vietnamese, which possesses pitch-plus-voice-quality t...

The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F0 and voice quality characteristics: two of the four tones (tones 3 and 4) were reported to be breathy in studies from the 1970s. For the present research (thirty years later), audio and electroglottographic data were collected from 5 speakers of the Risiangku dialect in their 30s or 40s. Voice quality is estimated by computing the glottal open quotient. The present results bear on 788 syllables (from a corpus of 6,500). They show that in the speech of three speakers (M2, M3 ...

The Naxi language has three level tones: H, M and L (plus a marginal Rising tone). The present study aims to offer phonetic insights into this simple system through examination of production data from three male speakers and one female speaker: realizations of the three level tones on CV syllables, under two reading conditions, labelled as ‘CAREFUL’ and ‘IMPATIENT’. Fundamental frequency (F0), glottal open quotient (Oq), and formant frequency characteristics are estimated. The three level tones span about 8 semitones under ‘CAREFUL’ reading and 11 semitones under ‘IMPATIENT’ reading. The average distance separating H from M is on the same order as that separating M from L. Under ‘IMPATIENT’ reading, F0 register is higher. Oq follows speaker-specific patterns. No clear pattern of influence of tone or reading condition on vowel articulation was found. These findings (along with the original data, made available in full) offer a basis for cross-linguistic comparison.

This paper discusses the prosody of Naxi, Yongning Na and Laze, three Sino-Tibetan languages of the Naish subgroup. These three languages have three level tones (High, Mid and Low). Level tones are not unattested in China and Southeast Asia, but have received somewhat less attention than the phonetically complex tones typically found in Sinitic and other families in the area. The study of level-tone systems in Asia appears as a promising field of research, now still in an early stage of development. Central issues concern these languages' place in prosodic typology, and the ways in which intonation interacts with level tones. The paper explains how answers to these questions gradually emerged. The three languages considered here illustrate the great diversity of situations that one may expect to encounter in the field: the tones of Laze and Yongning Na fall squarely in the level-tone type, whereas Naxi is somewhat of an outlier among level-tone systems.

The Naxi language has three level tones: H, M and L (plus a marginal Rising tone). The present study aims to offer phonetic insights into this simple system through examination of production data from three male speakers and one female speaker: realizations of the three level tones on CV syllables, under two reading conditions, labelled as ‘CAREFUL’ and ‘IMPATIENT’. Fundamental frequency (F0), glottal open quotient (Oq), and formant frequency characteristics are estimated. The three level tones span about 8 semitones under ‘CAREFUL’ reading and 11 semitones under ‘IMPATIENT’ reading. The average distance separating H from M is on the same order as that separating M from L. Under ‘IMPATIENT’ reading, F0 register is higher. Oq follows speaker-specific patterns. No clear pattern of influence of tone or reading condition on vowel articulation was found. These findings (along with the original data, made available in full) offer a basis for cross-linguistic comparison.