Issues in the Phonology of Prominence

S. Meredith, 1990

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A theory of the interaction of phonology and phonetics in the prosodic domains of fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity is developed.  Metrical constituent structure in the framework of Halle and Vergnaud 1987 is shown to be the fundamental representation of information for the prosodic domains, integrating phonological categories of tone and syllable weight with phonetic parameters of pitch, duration, and intensity.

The theory is illustrated by reference to three detailed case studies in the prosody of Tibetan, Beijing Mandarin Chinese, and English.  For Tibetan, it is shown that the status of syllable nuclei in abstract metrical structure correlates with complexity of surface tonal realization.  For Beijing Mandarin Chinese, it is shown that abstract metrical structure describing the location of stress is partially dependent on lexical tone quality of syllables.  For English, it is argued that tonological primitives do not interpose between abstract metrical description and surface pitch generation.

Thesis Supervisor:         Morris Halle

Table of Contents

Chapter 1         Tone, stress, and intonation                                                                   8

            1.1       Introduction: the sources of phonological prominence                 8

            1.2       Universals of phonetic interpretation of metrical constituent

                        structure                                                                                               13

                        1.2.1    Fundamental frequency                                                 13

                        1.2.2    Duration and length                                                                   22

                        1.2.3    Gesture                                                                                    27

            1.3       Overview of the case studies                                                                 31

                        1.3.1    Tibetan                                                                         31

                        1.3.2    Beijing Mandarin Chinese                                                         36

                        1.3.3    English intonation                                                                      38

            1.4       Summary                                                                                              40

Chapter 2         Tibetan tone and stress                                                             42

            2.1       Introduction                                                                                          42

            2.2       RST nouns                                                                                           44

                        2.2.1    The tonal inventory of RST monosyllabic nouns             44

                                    2.2.1.1 Syllable coda quality                                                     44

                                    2.2.1.2 Glottal stop coda                                                          47

                                    2.2.1.3 Surface tone coda                                                         48

                                    2.2.1.4 Distribution of tonal shapes                                           49

                                                2.2.1.4.1          High register tone shapes                      51

                                                            2.2.1.4.2.1       The level class                          52

                                                            2.2.1.4.2.2       The falling class             53

                                                2.2.1.4.2          Low register tone shapes                      53

                                    2.2.1.5 Phonological form of tone specifications                        54

                        2.2.2    Tone patterns of compound nouns                                             57

                                    2.2.2.1 Disyllabic compounds                                                   57

                                    2.2.2.2 Tonal and segmental effects of compounding     58

                                                2.2.2.2.1          A restriction on tonal output                  61

                                                2.2.2.2.2          Metrical dependences (MS1)                63

                                                2.2.2.2.3          Disyllabic compound derivations           65

                                    2.2.2.3 Trisyllabic compounds                                      71

                                                2.2.2.3.1          Morphological types                             71

                                                2.2.2.3.2          Pitch interpolation                                 72

                                                2.2.2.3.3          Trisyllabic compound derivations           74

                                                2.2.2.3.4          Rise insertion                                        79

                                    2.2.2.4 Quadrisyllabic nouns                                                     81

                                                2.2.2.4.1          Quadrisyllabic noun derivations 81

                        2.2.3    Stress patterns of nouns                                                            84

                                    2.2.3.1 Relation of stress metrics to abstract tonal metrics          85

                                    2.2.3.2 Basic units of stressibility                                               86

                                    2.2.3.3 Parameters of noun stress (MS2)                                  89

                                    2.2.3.4 Noun stress derivations                                     90

                        2.2.4    Head-shifting determiners in NP syntax                         95

            2.3       Verbal complex Tone                                                                           105

                        2.3.1    The verb stem                                                                           105

                        2.3.2    Metrical dependencies                                                  106

                        2.3.3    Verb stem alternations: level/fall                                     108

                        2.3.4    Verbal complex tone derivations                                               110

                        2.3.5    Classification of affixes                                                  113

                        2.3.6    The honorific auxiliary verb (nan)                                               114

                        2.3.7    Negation in the verbal complex                                     122

            2.4       Verbal complex stress                                                                           126

                        2.4.1    Verbal complex stress parameters                                             126

Chapter 3         Lexical and phrasal stress in Beijing Mandarin                           132

            3.1       Introduction                                                                                          132

            3.2       The tone/stress correlation                                                                    133

                        3.2.1    The tones of Beijing Mandarin                                       133

                        3.2.2    The relative strength of tones                                                     134

                        3.2.3    Formalization of stress                                                  136

                        3.2.4    Derivations                                                                               138

            3.3       Alternative approaches                                                             144

                        3.3.1    Universal phonetics                                                                   145

                        3.3.2    Independence of stress and tone?                                              147

            3.4       Compound noun stress                                                             149

                        3.4.1    Compound noun stress parameters                                            150

                        3.4.2    NP derivations                                                                          151

                        3.4.3    Four-syllable compounds and stress clash                                 154

            3.5       An alternative treatment (Yip 1989)                                                      165

Chapter 4         On the representation of intonation in linguistic theory                 171

            4.1       Introduction                                                                                          171

                        4.1.1    The focus model                                                                       171

                                    4.1.1.1 Focus structure, accent placement, and

interpretation                                                                172

                                    4.1.1.2 A focus structure derivation                                           175

                                    4.1.1.3 The formulation of accent placement                              179

            4.2       The intonation model                                                                             184

                        4.2.1    Laryngeal generation                                                                 184

                        4.2.2    Relation to metrical structure                                                     186

            4.3       Issues of duration                                                                                  197

            4.4       Comparison with a discrete-level theory                                                200

                        4.4.1    Overview of Pierrehumbert 1980                                              201

                        4.4.2    The tonal inventory of English                                        203

                                    4.4.2.1 PF-external considerations                                            203

                                                4.4.2.1.1          Syntax                                                  203

                                                4.4.2.1.2          Semantics                                             204

                                    4.4.2.2 PF-internal considerations                                             209

                                                4.4.2.2.1          The basic H/L distinction                       209

                                                4.4.2.2.2          Differences in interpolation                    216

                                                4.4.2.2.3          Downstep                                             218

                                                4.4.2.2.4          Impossible contours                              220

            4.5       Cross-dialect intonation                                                                        223

            4.6       Intonation and gesture                                                                           226

            4.7       Intonation and linguistic theory                                                   229

Appendix 1      Metrical constituent structure                                                                 232

            1          The elemnts of metrical structure                                                           232

            2          Metrical constituents                                                                             233

            3          Well-formedness statements for grid lines                                              235

            4          Derivational procedure                                                              239

            5          Sample derivation                                                                                 240