Tone Analysis for Field Linguists

Keith Snider

• Publisher: SIL International
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781556714221
• eBook ISBN: 9781556714320
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Tone, the use of pitch to provide phonological contrast between morphemes, plays an integral role in the structures of many languages. This book teaches linguists a tried-and-proven methodology for analyzing tone in any part of the world. Significant features: • Delivers the most comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to tone analysis for field linguists• Emphasizes the discovery of contrastive tone patterns of morphemes, as opposed to contrastive tones of tone-bearing units• Focuses on keeping constant all factors that can potentially affect tone, so that utterances being compared are truly comparable• Includes a chapter on the phonetic properties of pitch• Presents principles for developing orthographies for tone languages• Includes comprehensive accompanying online exercises* that guide students from beginning to end through a complete analysis of nominal tone in a single language, Chumburung.Assuming little prior knowledge of tone or tone languages, Tone Analysis for Field Linguists is readily accessible to students and field workers alike who have previously taken introductory courses in articulatory phonetics, phonology, and morphology and syntax.*Instructors may access the accompanying online exercises. Register here: https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/toneanalysis_teachermaterials

1 Introduction

Tone, often viewed by many as “exotic,” is one of the most fascinating topics in linguistics that one can investigate. Differences in pitch that might seem unimportant to speakers of non-tone languages often signal major differences in meaning in tone languages, and examples such as those in (1) never seem to lose their appeal.

(1) Four tones in Mandarin [cmn]1 (McCawley 1978:120)

	mā	‘mother’
	má	‘hemp’
	mǎ	‘horse’
	mà	‘scold’

Even for linguists, the different tonal alternations that some morphemes undergo in different contexts can be utterly baffling. For example, how does one explain the different placements of the high tones in (2)?

(2) Tone alternations in Mbololo Taita [dav] (Odden 2006:41)

	mbanga	‘cave’		mbangá mbaha	‘big cave’
	nganda	‘wall’		nganda mbáha	‘big wall’

Since the second word in each of the phrases mbangá mbaha and nganda mbáha is the same (viz. mbaha ‘big’), the fact that the high tones are placed differently in the two phrases must mean that mbanga ‘cave’ and nganda ‘wall’ have different underlying tones. Yet tonally, these two words are pronounced identically in isolation. Seemingly unsolvable puzzles like these not only intrigue experienced linguists, but also sometimes frighten off beginning linguists. This is unfortunate because once one understands the true nature of tone, the general principles that govern its analysis turn out to be no different than those that govern segmental analysis. This book therefore seeks to help beginning linguists bridge that mysterious gap between analyzing segments and analyzing tone.

Although serious research into how to analyze tone languages is definitely taking place,2 the fact remains that tone is still often poorly investigated and tone marking often ignored in publications that focus on other aspects of linguistics. Undoubtedly, the reasons for this are numerous and complex, but one stands out as being a major culprit: historically, at least, most serious linguistic research has been carried out by people who don’t speak a tone language. While such speakers are comfortable transcribing and analyzing contrasts differentiated by consonants and vowels (elements common to all languages), many are distinctly uncomfortable transcribing and analyzing similar contrasts differentiated by tone, a device not employed in their own languages.

1.1 What is a tone language?

Since tone is not a characteristic common to all languages, it is important to understand what it is, and how tone languages differ from their non-tone counterparts, particularly since all languages do employ pitch contrastively in one way or another. Throughout this book, the term “pitch” is used to denote phonetic tone, or tone as it is perceived, while the term “tone” denotes phonological tone, or tone as it is realized in contrast with other tones (see section 1.2). Pitch is often described acoustically in terms of fundamental frequency (abbreviated F0), which corresponds articulatorily to the rate at which the vocal folds vibrate at any point in time. When precise phonetic detail is not important, pitch is often represented graphically using the “bar” notation. In this notation, level pitches are represented with level bars that correspond to the pitch heights they represent (e.g., LH [

]), and contour pitches are represented with angled bars that slope from higher to lower in the case of falling pitches (e.g., falling [

]), or from lower to higher in the case of rising pitches (e.g., rising [

]).

Here are some examples of how pitch contrasts differentiate meaning in English [eng], a non-tone, intonation language.

(3) Contrastive intonation patterns in English

The examples in (3) illustrate two contrastive intonation patterns that are frequently used in English. Notice that for each pattern, when we substitute different nouns and verbs for the different sentence constituents, the pattern itself doesn’t change, even when the number of syllables in the relevant constituents changes. This is because the intonation pattern ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Methodology for Phonological Analysis of Tone
• 3 Phonetics of Pitch
• 4 Tone and Orthography
• 5 Phonological Analysis of Chumburung Tone
• 6 The Lexical Orthography Hypothesis Applied to Chumburung Tone
• References
• About the Author