1. Prosody, Tone, Intonation and Stress
Phonology III
Prosody, Tone, Intonation and Stress

2. Recap ...
Phonemes: the smallest unit of meaning-carrying sound in a language
Allophones: sounds that can be replaced in a word without changing the meaning
We saw that certain allophones will only appear in certain environments:
That is: they are predictable and thus are in complementary distribution

3. Prosody Pitch, tone, intonation All languages have prosodic properties
Suprasegmental: exist extraneously to the segment (phonemes)
All phones have certain inherent suprasegmental features.

4. Tone Languages Tone languages
feature of the lexicon: pitch indicates (and changes) lexical meaning
phonemic combination + pitch = encode semantic information
(non-tone) languages: pitch is functional (mood, emotion, warning, stress) but not directly influencing lexical meaning

5. Register (Level) Tones
miɬ
H M L
miɬ miɬ miɬ
moth snare sleep
(Sarcee - Athapaskan language of Canada)
Tones are level: High / Mid / Low
2 or 3 distinctive pitch levels ... probably never more than four.
Levels are relative to each other.

6. ‘Downdrift’ in Igbo (Nigeria)
O na aŋwa inja igwe
H L H L H L H L O aŋ
na in
wa ig ja we

7. Contour (gliding) tones
Mandarin (four tones + neutral)
Ma - ㄇ丫
媽(媽) – ma55 / mā
麻– ma35 / má
馬 – ma213 / mǎ
罵– ma41 / mà
Contours found in many Asian languages (Vietnamese, Thai, Cantonese etc.)

8. Semantic / Syntactic Differences Signalled by Tone
Bini (Nigeria): indicates differences in verb tense.
ima - LL (I show) Timeless
ima - HL (I am showing) - Continuous
Ima - LH (I showed) - Past
So, tone here is perhaps more indicative of syntactic than lexical difference?

9. Tone Sandhi Tones can be conditioned by the tones around them:
So in Mandarin, two second (high-rising) tones?
Second high-rising tone becomes third tone.
In Mende (Sierra Leone) there are 3 register tones, but 5 patterns. (H/L/HL/LH/LHL)
Mbu (rice)(monosyllabic, rising pitch)
Fande (cotton) (low, high)
Ndavula (sling) (low, rest high)
Can give the impression of contour tones (but actually register)

10. Register vs. Contour Tones
Somewhat easier to judge contour tones
Register (level) tones often difficult to figure out without additional points of reference.

11. Intonation Intonation:
Many languages have intonation, which conveys semantic content (but isn’t lexically dfferentiated)
Did you see that? / I’m so sorry / What did you do last night?
Terminal intonation contour (falling):
John parked the car.
 signals completeness in American English
Non-terminal intonation contour (rising, or level)
But that’s not ...
 signals incompleteness in AE
But: high rising terminal is part of Australian English, and some parts of UK

12. ‘Downdrift’ in Igbo (Nigeria)
O na aŋwa inja igwe
H L H L H L H L O aŋ
na in
wa ig ja we