Issues in the Phonology of Prominence
, S. Meredith 1990
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